New Fed Chair is Dry Like Sandpaper
45sThis blunt, controversial criticism of the new Fed chair hooks viewers who distrust politicians and want raw opinion.
▶ Play ClipThe video analyzes Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh's recent communication, interpreting his cautious, data-dependent stance as a sign that the Fed will likely change how it measures inflation—potentially switching to the Dallas Fed trimmed mean—to justify future rate cuts. The speaker argues the market's pricing of rate hikes is wrong and sees a long-term buying opportunity.
The speaker describes Kevin Warsh as dry, sandpaper-like, and politician-sounding, expecting he will serve two four-year terms (eight years total), and that his responses train the media not to ask questions.
The speaker believes Warsh will likely switch the Fed's preferred inflation measure from PCE to the Dallas Fed trimmed mean inflation, which currently sits at 2.55% and is trending down, allowing the Fed to claim 2% inflation and cut rates.
Warsh indicated setting up five task forces, including one on inflation and one on productivity/jobs. The speaker interprets this as using AI to increase labor productivity, which Warsh sees as deflationary, enabling rate cuts without worrying about inflation.
The speaker agrees with the idea of using real-time data (earnings, CEO guidance, AI analysis) instead of legacy surveys like JOLTS, which suffer from low response rates and back-filling, to get a more accurate picture of the economy.
The speaker notes Warsh wants 'better sources of data from the private market' and 'real-time information' using artificial intelligence, which could reduce reliance on outdated monthly reports and forward guidance.
The speaker states that the CME futures market shows only a 20% chance of stable rates by year-end, translating to an 80% chance of a rate hike, which the speaker calls 'absolutely wrong'.
The Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) shows 50% of Fed staff not pricing in a rate hike, with average inflation declining from 3.3% to 2.3-2.4% without a guaranteed hike. The speaker argues the market's reaction is based on misinterpretation.
The speaker compares the current market pricing of rate hikes to 2022 when he bought Nvidia cheaply, suggesting now is a time to buy stocks that are 'printing money' and cheap, while the market misprices future rate cuts.
Overall, the speaker believes Kevin Warsh will lead the Fed to cut rates by changing inflation metrics and using real-time data, and that the market's fear of rate hikes is overblown, creating a buying opportunity.
"The title accurately reflects the market decline after Warsh's speech, but the content focuses more on the speaker's bullish interpretation than just a market tank."
What inflation measure does the speaker believe Warsh will switch to?
Dallas Fed trimmed mean inflation.
01:06
What is the current level of the Dallas Fed trimmed mean inflation according to the video?
2.55%.
01:18
How many task forces did Warsh indicate setting up?
Five task forces.
01:47
What does the speaker say about Warsh's view on AI's impact on inflation?
Warsh thinks AI is deflationary because it increases labor force productivity.
02:17
Why does the speaker support using real-time data instead of legacy surveys?
Because post-COVID, response rates for surveys like JOLTS plummeted, and they are back-filled with estimates, making them less useful.
03:27
According to the CME futures market, what is the chance of a rate hike by the end of the year?
80%.
06:43
What does the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) show about Fed staff's rate hike expectations?
50% of staff do not price in a rate hike, and the average staff sees inflation declining by ~1% without a guaranteed hike.
09:01
What happened to the 10-2 yield curve according to the speaker?
It dumped about nine basis points, a massive decline.
07:39
Bullish on Rate Cuts via Inflation Metric Change
This is the core contrarian thesis: the speaker predicts the Fed will change the inflation measure to justify rate cuts, making the market's fears unfounded.
00:53AI as Deflationary Force
The speaker highlights Warsh's view that AI increases labor productivity, potentially reducing inflation without rate hikes—a nuanced economic principle.
02:17Critique of Stale Economic Data
The speaker explains how surveys like JOLTS have low response rates and are back-filled, supporting the need for real-time data—a factual critique of Fed methodology.
03:27Market's Overreaction to Rate Hikes
The speaker presents specific percentages (80% chance of hike) and contrasts with his bullish view, offering a clear contrarian investment perspective.
06:43SEP Contradicts Market Pricing
The SEP data showing only one hawkish dot among many provides factual evidence that the market's hike pricing may be overdone.
09:01[00:00] Well, we just got a new Jerome Powell dude, except this guy is dry like sandpaper, he sounds like a politician, we'll probably stuck with the guy for two four-year term, so
[00:12] eight years, eight years of this. And boy, every fricking question that he gets as- it's almost like he's trying to train the media to not ask him. His responses are either, I don't give forward guidance.
[00:27] Ask the task force, actually you can. The task force will let you know, this is going to be weird, but let me just start with what I think he's doing, and then we'll get into some more of what he said, because there's
[00:41] a lot of reading between the lines you have to do with this guy. So let me give you the bottom line first, because I respect your time. Bottom line, bullish, why?
[00:53] Because this guy is probably going to change which measure of inflation they use. I think they're going to dump PCE inflation, and I think they'll end up using something
[01:06] like the Dallas-Bed trimmed mean inflation, which if you look at this, you could actually see right now, it's sitting at 2.55%, it's been falling pretty stably.
[01:18] I mean, yes, we've got ups and downs like the stock market, but the trend is clearly down here. Look at the actual trim mean chart, and you get into some of the details of it here. The one month level is at that 2.55 level, six month level at 2.3, so you're actually almost
[01:33] there at 2%. And if you come in and your task force says, you know, we should be using a different measure of inflation. And then you swap to something like trim mean, now you can magically say, hey, look at this,
[01:47] we have officially reached 2% inflation, guess what boys and girls, it's time for rate cuts. That's my take with what he's doing with rates. Now he indicates that he's essentially setting up five different task forces, one on communications,
[02:05] one on the balance sheet, one on data sources, one on productivity and jobs, and one on inflation. I think the inflation task force will end up measuring inflation in a different way, that will make his job easier.
[02:17] Because the productivity and jobs one is going to take into account, quote, implications from AI. That's a fancy way of saying exactly what he's been forecasting that he thinks artificial intelligence is deflationary, increases labor force productivity, and therefore we could
[02:32] lower rates while facing disinflation from AI, and we don't actually have to worry about inflation. Now a lot of people are going to be really pissed about that, because he comes out and he's literally like, I'm not really worried about the price of eggs or price of beef, I'm worried
[02:47] about broader measures of inflation, and specifically utilizing real-time data. Now that's something else. I mean, I basically heard him say, long palantir boys and girls, and I'll tell you, I just
[02:59] watched the first of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I learned what a palantir was, that all seemed bald, I'd be communicating crystal balls, I really crystal, it's more clear. But anyway, kind of cool.
[03:12] I actually agree with this, basically Kevin Worsh came out and said, look, why are we worried about jobs data that comes out at the beginning of every month, but it's not actually useful to us until the third revision, so basically, you know, three months later.
[03:27] Why don't we actually use real-time data and then incorporate AI with that data? And so AI and other real-time sources of data can actually tell us what's happening in the economy in real-time rather than relying on these old reports that are subject to a lot
[03:45] of revisions and are subject to really low response rates. He's not wrong about this. Post-COVID, the response rates plummeted for the job survey, for the jobs, the opening and labor turnover survey, all of these have gotten reamed in response rates.
[04:00] And so the surveys aren't as useful as they used to be, a lot of the surveys are getting filled in, sort of back-filled in with estimates or assumptions, seasonal adjustments. So he's not wrong.
[04:13] I actually kind of support the idea of using more updated tools to determine what's going on with the economy. For example, you know, that could be based on earnings, it could be based on guidance from CEOs, it could be based on actual hiring.
[04:27] Like even the Jolt survey includes a lot of job openings that aren't actually really open anymore. They're just like forgotten listings on online hiring websites, where you could probably use AI to measure the delta, right, the change of job openings month to month, much faster
[04:45] by analyzing big data, probably using software like Palantir, frankly, and analyzing month to month changes as opposed to these aggregates that could be full of old data.
[04:58] So I don't know that. I'm making assumptions on some of those components, but I'm building in what he said, which was, we want better sources of data from the private market. We want information that is real-time information, we want to use artificial intelligence.
[05:14] We don't want to give forward guidance, and then the economy freaks out to what we're saying. In fairness here, I thought that Kevin Warsh was going to talk down the risk of rate hikes.
[05:26] The most he really said about rate hikes was, eh, half of the people are telling me they don't want rate hikes, half say they don't want rate hikes, okay fine. Which let's look at what's actually happening in the bond market and what's happening with
[05:38] the odds of rate hikes, and you'll kind of see why the market is reacting the way it is. Just a quick note, this morning, we shouted out Robinhood as potentially being a part of the next sector to get a lot of momentum.
[05:52] And since our shout out, the stock is up 12, freaking percent. We shouted this out at 96 dollars, it's trading at $108 right now. We've done some more fundamental analysis on it as well over in the meat, kevin app for
[06:04] course members. Major meat kevin, stock AI update came out last week for course members. You can get a free sample as well. We're coming out with the Alpha wire service within the next 24 hours for course members.
[06:17] And so of course, we'll be raising the price again. But for now, you could use coupon code HOPE, that's mostly because the pope gave me a nod while I was wearing the reinvested shirt in Barcelona a few days ago. You could see that on X.
[06:29] But anyway, join and get all nine courses every trade alert, every private live stream, every Alpha report, all in one membership over at meatkevin.com. Okay, for now though, in addition to awesome shout outs, let's focus on what's not so awesome.
[06:43] And that is that we only have a 20% chance right now of actually staying stable by the end of the year on the CME futures market. This is bad. We've literally gone from about a 55% chance of a rate hike by the end of the year to an 80%
[06:59] chance of a rate hike by the end of the year. This is why markets are pissed off. In my opinion, they are wrong. They are absolutely wrong. And I'll show you why in just a moment. By July 28th, markets are pricing in only a 17% chance that we will be stable or lower,
[07:15] which is an 83% chance that we're going to get a hike or multiple rate hikes by July 27th of, sorry, July 28th of 2027.
[07:27] This is wrong in my opinion. But looking at the bond market, you could actually see the bond market is really plummeting. The odds of a shock from policy.
[07:39] We could see the 10-2 yield curve has dumped today about nine basis points, which is a massive plummet. The market has absolutely crashed on this, which is actually bullish for the economy.
[07:51] Now why is this happening? It's happening because the two-year yield is rising slightly, and the 10-year yield is rising more. You can see the two-year right now is sitting up about 14 bips.
[08:05] And if I jump over to the 10-year, I want to say it's up somewhere around 34. Let's go here. Come on. Come on. 0.047, I should say.
[08:17] So 4.7 bips versus here about, actually, wow, 14. No, you've actually come up quite a lot on the two-year. So that's actually very interesting. This is the market responding heavily to this idea that, hey, all right, it sounds like
[08:32] we're going to get hikes. It's the same thing you see over here on the CME Watch Group. But that is not what the summary of economic projections is actually forecasting. This is why I think the market is wrong to assume we're going to get rate hikes this
[08:44] year. First of all, I think Kevin Worsh is going to change the definition of inflation, and therefore we won't need rate hikes, because we'll magically be at 2%. I think that's coming. But even beyond that assumption, look at the summary of economic projections.
[09:01] With 50% of the staff not pricing in a rate hike, the average of Fed staffers still sees inflation going from 3.3 to 3.4 all the way down to 2.3 to 2.4.
[09:13] That is a 1% decline as we roll over from tariffs to Ron and AI supply shortages, a lapping of annual inflation. There's a 1% decline as being priced in without a guaranteed rate hike here.
[09:25] So I'm sort of surprised that the market is believing that Kevin Worsh just implied there's going to be a rate hike. I don't see that at all. In fact, I can see here you've got one knucklehead who thinks rate should be at 4.4%, five
[09:39] think there should be two hikes, one think there should be one hike, and this is for 2026. But the bulk of people right here at a hold, and I think the bias is going to be towards holding and waiting because you don't want to repeat what happened in the 1970s.
[09:53] In the 1970s, we saw a lot of up and down adjustments that actually contributed to a lack of faith or confidence in the Federal Reserve and ended up getting us Paul Volker to sort of put
[10:05] the pants back on at the Fed. No sign here that the unemployment rate has any issues, in fact, Kevin Worsh himself mentioned that he is hearing a lot about how stable the unemployment market or the employment market the jobs market is right now.
[10:19] It also should not have been a surprise that the summary of economic projections implied a rate hike over here. The market did turn down as soon as we got this. That shouldn't have been a surprise. We've already been pricing in a rate hike all year long.
[10:32] So I was surprised the market did go down after this because we've already known the bond market was pricing in one hike rate hike for 2026. In fact, at one point it was pricing in a rate hike for 2026 and a rate hike for 2027.
[10:44] The bond market actually still is. But the summary of economic projections is pricing in a rate hike for 2026 and a rate cut for 2027. It's up 25 basis points this year and down 25 basis points this year.
[10:57] Now, somebody did, or next year, somebody did hawk this meeting a lot. Somebody actually thinks the rate should be up almost one full percent but that's only one person that the fed, that's that one dot that one knucklehead who's really hawkish
[11:12] right now. And it's not Kevin Worsh because Kevin Worsh didn't fill out any projections at all. He abstained from filling out anything. Their statement was also substantially shorter. They've removed essentially all forms of forward guidance.
[11:27] And I hate to say it, but the market's revisiting the 725 support line. We bounced off of it earlier when we got the statement. We are falling into the close, which unfortunately does mean that triple leverage funds are likely to come out and also sell into the close as SpaceX is likely to have its first red day
[11:43] here. I am bearish SpaceX long term, even though I hold SpaceX. Once we get to July and we start getting lockups, I think a lot of people are going to be running for the exit on it. And I think there'll be better chances and better opportunities by SpaceX.
[11:56] We are looking for new sectoral leadership could end up continuing to be finance, especially after that boost we saw at Robinhood today. So if I might be another beneficiary of that, especially with their home lending sector really exploding, but really long term here.
[12:10] So ignoring kind of shorter term moves in the market, long term, Kevin Worsh really came out here and suggested we're going to have a lot of changes that if you look at the housing market, federal reserve policy is restrictive.
[12:23] If you look at the stock market, it's not. He thinks that inflation is a choice, but they don't have major urgency right now. That they have the luxury of time right now to sit down and sort of re-analyze how they want to put data together, whether they're going to have press conferences or not, depends
[12:38] on whether they have an announcement to make or some kind of press conference to give. He thinks that press conferences should really be reserved for when you have something useful to say. So there is a potential future where we get fewer press conferences with Kevin Worsh.
[12:51] We get a different inflation regime that suggests, oh, inflation is actually good. He's probably going to push rates down over his term. I actually expect to have lower rates than ever before by 2032.
[13:04] This is a mindset that I've had for the last four years and I think that'll be true. I think he's going to use essentially more real-time data, potentially incorporating AI data to guide the Fed on where they should be with policy.
[13:17] Obviously, there are some risks with that. We've never had AI-led data controlling Fed policy or at least advising Fed policy. So it's going to be interesting to see how all this plays out. But I think the bias here is hold until we get a new explanation for the economy and then
[13:36] probably cut. Today, though, markets are really pricing in a lot of rate hikes. This is very aggressive. You've got probably two to even three, maybe even four rate hikes priced in over here going
[13:50] through the summer of 2027. And again, you go to the end of the year. You're pricing in one to two hikes with an equal chance, basically, a one-third chance for each of them of a rate hike by the end of the year. I personally think this is totally wrong and it makes me bullish because I think money is
[14:05] made when people are not looking at certain stocks. I think in 2022, when I was loading up on Nvidia, which ended up being a 10X in my portfolio made millions of dollars. I was really grateful for that.
[14:18] Everybody was making fun of me for buying chips then. It's kind of like today, it's really unpopular to buy certain stocks that are printing money that are really cheap in their valuation and they're cheap at the same time as the market
[14:32] is pricing in right hikes when I think we're actually more likely to get rate cuts. Now we'll see. It could be wrong, obviously, you know, that's what makes us human, after all. But if you want to see exactly what I'm investing in, consider joining us over at meatkevin.com.
[14:45] You could use that coupon code Pope. The reason, again, that Pope is because we actually got that nod from the Pope over here, which I was really happy about. I was wearing the reinvest polo and yeah, gotta say, it's kind of cool.
[15:00] It was not expected. People wait hours to see the Pope and then we got the nod right there. How sick is that? So, somebody told me it's not blasphemous to say the Pope likes you or gives you a nod.
[15:14] Only if you use God in that reference, so that was good. But anyway, that gives us a little bit of a breakdown of what's going on with Kevin Warsh. I will say he's a little bit boring, a little bit of a politician.
[15:27] I expect a lot of changes to come from the foul reserve, but I think that they will buy us down. And again, if you look at the summary of economic projections, you could even see that bonus down on rates here.
[15:39] And I think they're going to repel from that noisiness of, you know, oh, we're gonna hike and then we're gonna cut. I think that's a terrible idea. And in fact, I think one of the most powerful comments that I heard was Kevin Warsh was asked,
[15:52] hey, was there like a consensus from the committee? And the consensus was that there is no consensus. He in fact called everybody pretty humble and, you know, pretty willing to listen to other commentary and potentially even change their minds.
[16:06] And so there was no overbearing push towards one direction or another, which is very consistent with my belief that we're likely to do nothing until we get a cut. The market is totally mispricing that in my opinion, which creates a long-term buying opportunity.
[16:22] So yes, that makes me bullish, probably sitting somewhere around an 8.3 on the bear bowl scale right now, which, you know, it's pretty elevated, certainly not desiring, rushing into debt. I'm not a big fan of debt because I do think that they're, you know, the next time we have
[16:38] a recession, whenever that comes, it will be one of the worst. And Kevin Warsh will actually contribute it, contribute to it being bad. He'll cut rates to zero, but he won't print money like the other guys, like a Paul Volker
[16:50] or Janet Yellen or Jerome Powell. He won't print money like them or at least he'll try to resist from that. I think that his task force will also advise just that, which is unfortunately bearish for a recessionary period, which makes me very uninterested in debt.
[17:06] But with that said, overall, I'm optimistic here. I hate to say that I like what I heard because I'm tired of hearing task force. I am excited though about hearing, hey, we're going to update like how we collect data and
[17:21] how we analyze data. Honestly, it's long been needed. So we'll see what they come up with, but respect for trying because I agree that the data is quite dated. Anyway, there you go. Thanks so much for being here.
[17:33] I always appreciate you watching. Consider sharing, subscribe to the video or the channel. Feel free to follow me on X at Meet Kevin or on Instagram at RealMe Kevin. I try to post there every day and go to Meet Kevin.com and use that coupon code Pope.
[17:46] Why not advertise these things that you told us here? I feel like nobody else knows about this. We'll try a little advertising and see how it goes. Congratulations, man. You have done so much. People love you. People look up to you. Kevin, power for up there. Financial analyst and YouTube at Meet Kevin, always great to get your take.
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