Flagship Pod 5/7: The Fed Freakout

Every single Thursday we host a live discussion in our Discord channel at 5:00pm EST.

This gives you the opportunity to ask us questions and hear our thoughts on the things you want answers to!

Here's what we went over: 

• Why the market imploded over the fed raising rates 50 basis points

• How to monitor the coming volatility

• Where Bitcoin is heading

• What makes Merck a solid investment at this moment

If you'd like to listen live and ask us questions throughout the next live session, just join the weekly Thursday afternoon session at 5:00pm EST.

• To listen live, join our Discord here: Discord Channel

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Keep reading on below for the entire transcript!

Peter Starr:

From Moby.co, this is The Flagship Pod, a weekly live podcast discussing the stock market, the economy, and the various market forces powering the world around you. As always, I'm your host, Peter Starr, bringing you this time, honestly, just a wild day. We are coming to you live on May 5th, 2022 amidst a pretty sharp freakout on the NASDAQ, on the market as a whole.

The NASDAQ blew up a thousand points this morning. It's only down about 600 points now, after a pretty solid day yesterday where the Fed was like, "Hey, we're happy. We're fine. Everything's going well in terms of interest rates going up." But then the market looks at that again today and says, "You know what? No. I'm going to have a panic attack and completely implode over this." So a lot to discuss there. A lot of corporate earnings we missed out on last week. And, of course, various views into the economy itself.

To help us really understand what's happening with the continued market bipolar disorder over inflation, as always, I'm joined by Justin Kramer, CEO, co-founder and chief analyst here at Moby.co. Justin, man, what's good. Where in the world am I talking to you from today, dude? What's up?

Justin Kramer:

In our office in New York today, just getting situated here for the week while we launch some more stuff, talk to investors, typical stuff. So another week of traveling. Excited to get on the call today and start talking through what's going on. It is never a dull moment in the market. So, happy to talk to everything I'm sure you guys have questions on. And yeah, if you have questions along the way, too, just feel free to drop in the channel. Peter and I will answer him the best we can.

Peter Starr:

Yeah. What a moment to be trying to raise money right now, just in the middle of volatility season and what a moment to be starting our journey as we build out a more robust means by which people can understand their place in the market and understand the forces that power the market around them so folks can build better portfolios and have a more long-tail view of their wealth when we are dead in the middle of volatility season.

As always, folks, we need to remind you that of course the Moby team is not spread thin, but at pretty much max capacity right now as we go through this fundraise, expand our offerings, get an app launch, and do all sorts of nonsense as well. So if there's anything that you want us to keep an eye on, now more than ever, your feedback is super, super important. If there's anything you want us to look at, any metrics that seem a little bit strange, you can always hit see this up here on Discord. If you're listening to the recorded version of this podcast, this is recorded live over on a Discord server. You can find the link there in the description of the podcast you're listening to right now.

Otherwise, if you're here on Discord, always prefer to DM me. I'm @MobyStarr here on Discord, and if you have any other specific questions, free to ask me directly. I'm [email protected]. Again, we want to make sure that now more than ever, we are directly tailoring our research, our analytical viewpoint on things that you want to see, our brilliant and probably beautiful audience. Anyway, though, so let's get back to this inflation situation. So here's the order of events.

Yesterday, Jerome Powell, as expected, announces that the Fed is going to raise interest rates even more, 50 basis points. That seems cool. That seems fine. Yesterday, there was a bit of a market rally as the market's like, "Hey, that's awesome. I love that. I've priced this news in. Life is beautiful." And then today, it does a complete about-face, and we're seeing the market just do these wild swings. Of course, last week, we also saw a lot of really good positive market activity on the back of a lot of good earning calls. So it's just pure volatility season.

I can't make heads tails with this, Justin. How should I be looking at this? Are there any data points I can be watching to get a sense of if inflation actually peaking? Is it getting worse? Is Jerome Powell being too dovish, too hawkish? As you look at this, as we get deeper and deeper into trying to slow inflation, is there anything you're seeing that gives you clarity as to the direction things are going?