MIKE TOWNSEND: It's often said that what goes on in Washington doesn't really affect the markets … until it does. Right now, it feels like we're in one of those periods where what's happening in Washington has an outsized impact on what's happening on Wall Street.
Just think about the last few days:
We've had a Fed meeting that saw the central bank continue its historically fast pace of rate hikes.
We've added a new chapter to the ongoing story of turmoil in the banking sector, with another mid-size bank failure, and federal regulators are scrambling to respond.
And we've had the announcement that the U.S. defaulting for the first time ever may be much closer than expected.
Investors want to know answers to impossible questions: Is the Fed done hiking? Is the banking crisis over? Will Congress raise the debt ceiling and avoid a market-rattling default?
It's enough to make any investor a bit skittish.
Welcome to WashingtonWise, a podcast for investors from Charles Schwab. I'm your host, Mike Townsend, and on this show, our goal is to cut through the noise and confusion of the nation's capital and help investors figure out what's really worth paying attention to.
As I noted, there has been a lot of news affecting the markets over the last several days, so in just a few minutes, I'm going to welcome back Schwab senior investment strategist Kevin Gordon to help us digest it all. We may not be able to answer every question, but we'll break down what to watch for and how investors can be thinking about these uncertainties.
But first a quick update on a couple of the big issues making news in Washington.
Topping that list was the passage last week by the House of Representatives of the Republican debt ceiling bill. The final vote was 217-215, as close as it gets. The bill would raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion or until the end of March 2024, whichever comes first.
A number of Republican priorities are included. Among them are spending cuts that would total about $4.8 trillion over the next 10 years, though exactly what would be cut was not spelled out in the bill. The legislation would also repeal a number of provisions of last year's Inflation Reduction Act, including most of the $80 billion in the increased funding for the IRS and several of the president's green energy tax credits.
Those add-ons make this bill a non-starter in the Senate, so we remain at an impasse. On Monday, however, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen injected some much-needed urgency into the situation when she sent a letter to Congress stating that the default date could come as soon as June 1. That's earlier than was expected and had the effect of immediately jumpstarting negotiations. Within an hour of Secretary Yellen's letter, the White House announced that the president had invited the leaders of the House and Senate from both parties to a meeting on May 9. It will be the first conversation between the president and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy since February 1.
Even as the meeting is coming together, Democrats are insisting that they will only raise the debt ceiling without strings attached. And Speaker McCarthy is pointing out that the House-passed bill is the only actual legislation that either body has approved. At this point, I don't think anyone in Washington knows exactly how this will play out, but the clock is really ticking now.
Another notable event of the last week was the release of four separate government reports on the failures in March of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. Now there's a lot in these reports, but here are three key takeaways:
First, there were significant failures of regulatory oversight. Both the Fed and the FDIC admitted that they were aware of issues at the two banks but were not aggressive in ensuring that corrective measures were taken. Expect some changes to procedures at the regulatory agencies to ensure that doesn't happen again.
Second, tougher regulations for banks are coming. The Fed outlined a series of steps including enhanced stress testing and increased liquidity and capital requirements for banks with assets above $100 billion. But the regulatory process to implement tougher standards is a long slog, and it will be a year or more before anything changes.
And third, the FDIC looked at ways Congress could strengthen the deposit insurance system. It recommended that Congress set a higher cap for business accounts that are used for payroll. But it said that it did not think raising the deposit insurance coverage for all accounts above the current $250,000 cap nor eliminating the cap entirely would be good for the financial system. Now it's in the hands of Congress to decide what to do—and it could be a while before consensus is reached on any of the options on Capitol Hill.
On today's Deeper Dive, I want to check in with one of our market experts here at Schwab about a number of issues that are impacting the markets and testing the nerves of investors everywhere. Kevin Gordon is a senior investment strategist who spends his time analyzing the economy and markets. Kevin, welcome back to WashingtonWise.
KEVIN GORDON: Always good to be back with you. Thanks, Mike.
MIKE: Well, Kevin, let's begin with this week's Fed decision. The 25-basis-point rate hike―not much of a surprise, but what stood out to you from the commentary?
KEVIN: Sure, so as you mentioned, the Fed hiked rates by 25 basis points. That was largely expected by the market. And I’ll start with the statement, which garnered a lot of focus given there was a lot of attention on the fact that the Fed took out prior language saying there would be some additional policy firming, which really just means additional hikes. If there is firming in the future, if there are hikes in the future, that'll hinge on developments in the economy. So it all suggests that the Fed could pause at the next meeting.
And it gives the FOMC some cover, in my mind, because they aren’t pre-committing to a policy move; so, if we don’t see any meaningful progress on inflation, then the door is still slightly open for more restrictive policy later this year.
And the statement also mentioned that the Fed is still attentive to inflation risks, which is not a surprise, but there was also a mention of tighter credit conditions weighing on the economy and prices.
And one of the things that I find particularly interesting with this decision is that the vote was unanimous. There were no dissents, even though, before the meeting, you started to hear some Fed officials hint at the possibility of pausing. I just think it speaks to how focused this Fed is on inflation.
And, if we move on to the press conference, this is typical now with press conferences this year, the stock market was quite volatile during the press conference, with stocks particularly falling faster as Powell pushed back on the notion that the Fed would be cutting rates this year if it took inflation longer to get back to target.
So, overall, I don’t think that there's a firm takeaway from the statement or the press conference in terms of a pause in policy. Because Powell mentioned several times that the FOMC will continue to be data dependent. So, if we see inflation is not coming back to a trend with which they’re comfortable, that leaves more room for the Fed to be aggressive.
MIKE: The other big news of the past week, Kevin, is the House passage of the debt ceiling bill, that while it has no chance of going anywhere in the Senate, I think is at least a sign that Congress is getting serious about the debt ceiling dilemma. That, combined with Secretary Yellen's announcement that the default deadline may be just a few weeks away, has put this issue squarely on the front burner. Now, we've seen these debates before, of course, but this time does feel different. While there are a lot of prominent voices on both sides of the aisle saying we will never default, there also appear to be plenty of members of Congress who seem ready to do just that. So a couple of questions. First, we know that in the debt ceiling debate of 2011, the market saw a peak-to-trough decline of nearly 20%. So are you seeing anything in the markets that shows growing anxiety about the possibility of a default this year?
KEVIN: I think it depends on which market you're looking at. For now, you're not seeing a lot of anxiety in the stock market, but there's some stress that's started to creep into credit markets. And I'll caveat this by saying that I'm not the credit or the fixed income expert here, but if you just look at five-year credit default swaps for U.S. debt, which is, essentially, the cost of buying insurance against a U.S. government default, prices recently jumped to their highest since the global financial crisis. So there's really just more demand for insurance against the possibility of an actual default happening.
In the broader bond market, we're seeing is a huge spread recently between the one-month and the three-month yields, which essentially just means that investors have been piling into one-month Treasuries that mature before the default deadline, which is now anticipated to be June. And that means that prices for those bonds are surging, given the expected timeframe for the government to run out of funds, and just putting that in context, it's one way the market is telling you that we're fast approaching a deciding moment, given June is only a month away.
On the equity side, there hasn't been a whole lot of stress that you can directly tie to the debt issue, but I will say it's been fascinating to see how much price action this year has mimicked what we saw in the beginning of 2011.
MIKE: Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about the similarities to the debt ceiling crisis of 2011. Of course, we had the same political configuration then as we have now, and the result then was that we came the closest we have ever come to defaulting. So are we going to see a repeat of the equity market volatility that happened in 2011?
KEVIN: This is a bit eerie, and by no means am I trying to suggest that we're going to see a perfect repeat of 2011, but the S&P 500®'s moves so far this year has been very close to how it moved in the first four months of 2011. Those who lean more pessimistic on this issue might look at that and suggest it shows that stocks are whistling past the graveyard and prone to fall hard later this year. That was more or less the case in 2011, especially because the sharp drawdown in stocks didn't happen until after the debt agreement was reached.
And that's actually what I find most fascinating about the episode that year, is that the debt ceiling agreement was reached on July 31. By that time, the S&P 500 only fell by 5% from its April peak. So that's not that dramatic of a decline. It wasn't until after the agreement that the true pain arrived. So in the months following the agreement, the S&P 500 fell by an additional 15%, taking the total peak-to-trough decline to 19.3%, which is just short of the traditional bear market threshold of 20%. And, unsurprisingly, the sharpest declines happened around Standard and Poor's downgrade of U.S. credit. And it wasn't that drastic, in the sense that it was a downgrade from AAA to AA+, but it was still the first downgrade in U.S. history. Plus, the natural reaction at the time was that risk of another downgrade was elevated. And if you go beyond that point, the S&P 500 eventually went on to find its trough around October 2011. Then it rebounded and then eventually resumed the broader secular bull market that began in 2009.
I just think that this time it's going to be really interesting, especially in this current environment of elevated recession risk, is if the receding liquidity tide will dent stocks' performance after the debt ceiling is raised. So this anticipation we're seeing is that the U.S. Treasury will keep injecting liquidity into the banking system until the debt ceiling increase. But once we get through that roll-off, Treasury will have to replenish its cash position, given it's about a couple hundred billion short of its target. So we're looking at new bond issuance, and that, I think, might act as a weight on asset prices.
That's only one factor in this entire backdrop―I'm not suggesting it isn't important, but I also want to be considerate of the fact that we still have a Federal Reserve hiking rates, we still have an inflation problem, and we still have elevated risk of recession. So that combination, to me, inevitably, keeps some downward pressure on the market. And even if it doesn't seem like that on the surface, certainly the case when you look at some sectors like energy or banks.
MIKE: My other question is about what defaulting would actually look like. I mean, it's never happened. I know this is speculation, but given everything else that is going on in the economy and in the markets that you just outlined, could this be what sends the U.S. economy completely over the cliff, or are there guardrails in place to mitigate that outcome?
KEVIN: As you mentioned, I think what's most important for investors to recognize is that this is all speculation. So nobody has a true model for this because it hasn't happened, and that makes it pretty difficult, if not impossible, to game out. That said, though, I think it's safe to say that an actual default would be disastrous. You'd see the U.S. government miss its payments on obligations and then a likely spike in Treasury rates. And that would be stress-inducing for the U.S., but certainly for other governments around the world that borrow from the U.S. And in addition to higher cost of financing for our debt, you'd likely see a significant amount of market volatility across all asset classes, and then a dent to both consumer and corporate confidence. So that would risk a sharp retrenchment in spending and then eventually you'd probably see a spike in job losses.
I also think it would put global central banks in a pretty tough position. One would probably correctly guess that in a crisis like this, of default, the Fed would slash the fed funds rate aggressively. But it isn't that easy for other central banks, especially those in emerging markets, to follow suit. They have currencies to defend. So cutting rates aggressively is just not as easy of a task there as it is here, and they simply can't manage the same way that we can.
As far as guardrails are concerned, I'm not sure about the specificity around what would have to happen, given I'm assuming we would see some extraordinary measures from various cohorts in the government, but I also don't think that there would be much that could alleviate an actual default. The reality of that would be a huge hit to confidence in the U.S., given Treasuries are seen as, essentially, the safest and most liquid place in the world to park your money.
MIKE: Well let's hope that we don't go down this path because I don't think anyone on Capitol Hill wants to find out what happens when we have a default.
Let's shift gears to another slow-moving crisis that I know the markets are watching, and that's the turmoil in the banking sector. The March collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank really rattled the markets, but then there didn't seem to be that much contagion and things calmed down quickly. Now, the banking sector is back in the spotlight given the recent failure of First Republic. So are you seeing a broader reaction in the market? I mean, is there a bigger story here than just a bank failure here and a bank failure there?
KEVIN: So if you're looking at the surface or the index level, things look fine for the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ up to this point. So at the time that you and I are having this conversation, both of those indices are up about 8% and 17% year-to-date, respectively. But there's a lot more weakness below the surface and especially when you move down the cap spectrum. So just as an example, the Russell 2000, which is the proxy for small caps, has almost wiped away all of its gains this year. And even within the S&P 500, the regional banks, which are central in focus these days, as you mentioned, those are down by 36% year-to-date. So on the one hand, the poor performance in the banking sector is, obviously, representative of the profitability issues that many banks are now facing, particularly those that are regional. The large banks are fundamentally stronger for various reasons—they've got stricter regulations, there's better capital positions—but even for those, their stock prices haven't been immune to hits this year either.
And when you go back in history, I think it's interesting that it's consistent in that it's tough for the broader market to do well if the banks are not participating in the rally. So if you go back to the 1930s, you look at every major market low, banks have always rallied with the market. What's different now is that since the recent October 12 low for the S&P 500, and even if you broaden that out to the S&P 1500, the banking index is down slightly, and that's opened up this huge performance gap, given the S&P 500 has had a double-digit gain since October 12. So it may not sound dramatic, but I'll give you a few history nuggets just for some context. If you look at the past three bear market lows that were associated with recessions—that's 2020, 2009, and 2002—the banks rallied by 36%, 128%, and 21%, respectively, in the six months that followed. 2009 was clearly a case of rebounding from a catastrophic decline in the financial sector, but, still, I find it interesting that the fact was that banks were able to rally.
This all means that we'll likely have to see some sort of reconciliation within the market, either via banks catching up or the broader market catching down. And I just think that as long as you continue to see breadth staying weak for the major indexes, I'd probably keep myself in the latter camp. And in some ways, we've seen this movie before, with a small number of stocks responsible for the markets' gains, most recently starting in 2020, when the five largest stocks were responsible for the S&P 500's gain through the end of that year. And even if that's repeating again today, the fundamental backdrop is, essentially, the opposite of what it was in 2020. We're no longer in lockdown, and that means that if cyclical parts of the market are not rallying, and you're not seeing a lot of strength as you broaden out, and we're down to just a few large-cap growth stocks carrying the market higher, I'm not sure how bullish of a development that is. Plus, the bifurcation in 2020 and then into 2021, when a fewer number of large companies were outperforming, ultimately, preceded an ugly environment for the rest of the market, given we started to see these rolling bear markets at the sector and then the member level in 2021, which then turned into an all-out bear market in 2022.
And the last thing I want to touch on is if you just look at recent leadership shifts in the market, some traditional defensives, like consumer staples, have come up on the leaderboard lately, and, actually, since February, staples are the second-best performing sector, just slightly behind tech. So I think that if that persists, you're more likely to see that being consistent with a deteriorating market and economic backdrop, and that would put more downward pressure on the broader market itself.
But I would just keep in mind that this is likely already being felt by investors who are in individual names and/or sectors. The headline strength in indexes like the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ is masking much more weak trends below the surface.
MIKE: I appreciate the historical context you provided because that's really interesting.
Well, Kevin, so far, we've talked about a number of newsy events that are impacting the markets—the Fed, the debt ceiling debate, the banking turmoil. I'd like to step back and look more broadly at the economy. You just mentioned inflation, which is coming down and is a relative bright spot in a lot of mixed signals that the economy and the markets are sending. I know you really dig into inflation data. So what are those numbers telling you, and when do you think ordinary consumers will feel it? I mean, it still feels to most people, I think, like everything is expensive.
KEVIN: There are really two stories unfolding in the world of inflation, and I'd split it into the fast acceleration in headline metrics and then the stickiness in core metrics. So if you start at the headline level, which gets most of the media and mainstream attention, you've seen a lot of improvement in something like CPI. So the most recent data we have through March has CPI increasing by 5% year-over-year, which is down from the peak of 9.1% in June of 2022. Within that, services is still decisively the major contributor. So of that 5% year-over-year gain, core services, excluding food and energy, is contributing 4.1%. Core goods is only contributing 0.3%. And, actually, the shrinking contribution of the energy sector has been a notable driver of decelerating price pressures lately. And I think it's interesting that, actually, energy subtracted from CPI in year-over-year terms for the first time since January of 2021, which was before inflation got up and running. And there was a ton of upbeat focus on the deceleration and growth for metrics like CPI, but I think it's important to highlight a couple of things when it comes to overall inflation in this current cycle.
Headline CPI is not what the Fed is targeting. Members of the FOMC, they're much more pointed this time in tracking inflation. And, most notably, Chair Powell himself, they've been telling us that core services ex housing within PCE inflation is the metric that they want to watch. So just as a reminder, PCE is Personal Consumption Expenditures, and there's a price component that's pulled from that every single month, which is the inflation metric.
Here's the rub when it gets pretty nuanced, and stick with me because this is important as it pertains to the trajectory of inflation but also monetary policy. So there's a core services ex housing component in both CPI and PCE. The PCE version, though, has a much heftier weight, so it's taken longer to fall. And, in fact, if you look at the year-over-year change in CPI, the version in CPI, it's moved from 6.5% down to 5.8% over the past six months. So that's great, that's a good trend to look for, but it's at odds with the version that's in PCE. That's seen its year-over-year gain stay unchanged at 4.5% over that same timeframe.
So it might not sound that bad, but, again, you have to consider the fact that the rate has been hovering around 4.5 to 5% over the past year and that the Fed wants this to roll over at a faster rate. So far, that's not happening. And I think that given recent trends, it seems likely that headline inflation will continue to fall rather quickly, especially if you're going to see more commodity price pressure and commodity prices continue to soften. But I think that the stickiness of core prices is going to be an issue for the Fed this year, especially given the strength in job and wage growth for most of the economy. You still have services hiring that's robust, and as long as incomes are growing in that segment, in particular, we'll likely continue to see upward pressure on the inflation metrics the Fed is concerned with.
Just one thing to wrap up with. I know we all discuss these data points at length, and we often become obsessed with how much inflation is increasing on a month-over-month or a year-over-year basis, but the reality is that the broader public likely doesn't care about the specificity around these dynamics; they still see prices rising each month. It's not as if they're looking at a 0.1% increase and cheering that because it was slower than the expectation of 0.3%. So I think the difference in perception between Wall Street and Main Street is worth keeping in mind, especially when we're trying to understand how policymakers are dealing with this.
MIKE: Yeah, Kevin, I think that's a really important point because I think a lot of people just look at that kind of headline number. That's what they see in the media, that's what the media focuses on, and there's really a lot going on underneath the surface that people need to be paying attention to.
Well, of course, recession has been on everyone's mind for months now. It feels kind of like a never-ending story. "Recession is inevitable." Then, "Wait, maybe the Fed will stick the soft landing." And then, "Well, the Fed keeps hiking rates, and now they're actually using the word 'recession' in their statements, so that must mean we're in one." And on and on and on. We know the market leads the economy into and out of recessions. So what is the market telling us about the recession possibility right now?
KEVIN: This might just be semantics, but the reality is recession is always inevitable. You always have a recession at the end of a business cycle. It's really just a matter of timing. And that's why I'm always so struck when I hear a strategist or an analyst say a recession is inevitable, but they avoid discussing the layout as it pertains to timing and then the nature of the downturn itself.
So we've been saying that the economy has been plagued by a rolling recession for the better part of the past year. There's been key pockets of strength, such as the services sector, that have held up well, while other areas like housing have completely tanked. And before March, our base and best case was that the economy was likely going to continue to suffer from these rolling recessions, but we thought that they would be happening across a long enough timeframe that would perhaps prevent the NBER from declaring a formal recession. But given what happened with the banking sector in March, our thought is that lending standards will continue to tighten at an even faster pace, and that's probably going to cause more of a contraction in credit. So the result from that is a larger hit to small businesses, and then, ultimately, the services side of the economy. The absence of that credit shock is what had been supporting the idea that we wouldn't go into a formal recession, but lending standards were already tightening before SVB and Signature Bank imploded. So, to us, it's tough to imagine that they wouldn't continue to do so from here.
As it pertains to the market, I actually think stocks have been correctly telling the story of the economy this entire time. It's just been tougher for us to see it if we're not dissecting the data every single day. So in my mind, if we get a more formal recession sometime this year, that would have been correctly forecasted by the stock market's decline over the past year. And if you take that another step, with the market, again, being plagued by these mini bear markets over the past few months, while large-cap names carry us higher, like I mentioned with the bank stocks seeing horrible performance earlier this year, perhaps that speaks to the bifurcated nature of the next recovery.
And I think it, ultimately, comes down to the labor market. We're still in this unique cycle where labor has remained incredibly resilient in the face of rapid interest rate hikes, still-high inflation, and then a quick fading of pricing power for many companies. We also have to keep in mind that labor weakness is essentially a feature of what the Fed is trying to do in tamping down inflation. I don't think we can have high-conviction views on stocks until you get a better sense of how much pain the labor market has to endure from here in order for the Fed to be fully satisfied.
MIKE: Well, when it comes to recession, we won't know definitively until the NBER officially calls it, and that is almost always well after when we are already in one. What most investors want to know is the answers to impossible questions, like "How bad will it get?" "How crazy will the stock market get?" "How long will it last?" I know neither you nor I have a crystal ball, but what indicators are you watching, and what are they telling you now?
KEVIN: Even though we all use these scary words and phrases like "contraction in credit" and "labor market pain," we're still in the camp that the next recession would be relatively mild. And, admittedly, and as you mentioned, I don't have a crystal ball, and even if I did, I think it would be pretty opaque at this point, but I do think that there are stronger fundamentals in this economy that will allow us to escape contractions similar to COVID or the global financial crisis.
So if you look at households, in particular, balance sheets are in better shape these days relative to the lead-in to the global financial crisis. We don't have a systemic housing bubble that's putting the entire financial system at risk. And, actually, a lot of problem areas of both the market and the economy, they've already gone through their own recessions without bringing the overall economy down.
And I think it's also important to remember that we've had mild recessions in the past. It really wasn't that long ago that we had the short and shallow recession in 2001, from March to November of that year. So in 2001, the peak-to-trough decline in real GDP was just 0.4%. For context, the peak-to-trough decline during the global financial crisis was 4%. And in 2001, we lost around two and a half million jobs over the span of a few years. But during the global financial crisis, we lost closer to 10 million jobs, but in a short timeframe. So that's what makes recession analysis just a fascinating exercise. You can have an instance like the early 2000s when the bear market in stocks lasted for almost three years, the recession was only nine months long, and it took us almost three years for us to stop seeing job losses.
To me, that's why we have to look at data in totality these days. Not just jobs, not just GDP, not just income―it really depends on the whole package. And that's why it takes the NBER so long to both determine when we've entered a recession and when we've exited a recession.
MIKE: Well, I don't think that we'll ever get the general investing public to stop obsessing over whether we're in or out of a recession, but that's really important context that you provided.
Final question: We've covered a lot of ground today, and the upshot, at least to me, is that it feels like there's just an awful lot of uncertainty for investors right now. We're uncertain about a recession and how that might play out. We're uncertain about how the debt ceiling debacle might impact the market. So as investors, we know we can't time the market, but at some point, all these tough times for the economy will likely provide opportunity to add quality companies that have positive earnings, along with growth, to our portfolios, maybe companies we've been keeping an eye on but currently aren't that cheap. So what signals do you look for to get a sense of things maybe making a turn back towards the upside?
KEVIN: The point I really want to emphasize here is around the timing of recessions. So if you as the investor are waiting for the NBER to come out and say we're in a recession, and if you're basing your investment decisions on that, you're playing the wrong game, because if you go back in the history of the NBER and its declaration of recessions, the average time it takes them to tell us that we're in one is seven months after the recession has started.
So, again, take the global financial crisis as an example. That recession started in December of 2007. It wasn't until a full year later that the NBER announced we were in a recession. So if you were waiting until that point to sell your equity positions, you would have been selling at one of the worst parts of the bear market. Not only that, but if you were waiting for the NBER to say the recession was over, you would have been holding on for a while because the announcement didn't come until September of 2010. That's a full 15 months after the recession ended in June of 2009. So, again, if you were waiting for that clarity to give you an all-clear on buying stocks, you would have missed a ton of upside.
And I think it speaks to the fact that investors shouldn't try to time markets, especially when it comes to the announcement of recessions, but it also speaks to how we can sometimes fall prey to our emotions in human psychology. So to your point in the question, if you've identified companies that have high-quality characteristics, if they fit with your risk profile and your time horizon, and you're willing to be invested in stocks even in this uncertain environment, then by all means consider going for it. But broadly, in our view, investors should continue to look for those high-quality factors, so strong free cash flow, a high return on invested capital, a high return on equity, strong net profit margins, among others. I think that with the era of easy money clearly behind us, you don't want to be in names or segments of the market that are reliant on low interest rates. You want to find companies that can sustain strong profit margins in the face of both higher rates and slower growth. That's a tall order these days, but that's the nature of bear markets. It simply gets tougher to find those strong performers.
MIKE: Well, great perspective as always, Kevin. Thanks so much for taking the time to join me today.
KEVIN: Thanks so much, Mike. Always a pleasure.
MIKE: That's Kevin Gordon, senior investment strategist here at Charles Schwab. You can find his latest article, cowritten with Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist Liz Ann Sonders, at schwab.com/learn.
Well, that's all for this week's episode of WashingtonWise. We'll be back with a new episode in two weeks. Take a moment to follow the show in your listening app so you won't miss an episode. And if you like what you've heard, leave us a rating or a review—those really help new listeners discover the show.
For important disclosures, see the show notes or schwab.com/washingtonwise, where you can also find a transcript.
I'm Mike Townsend, and this has been WashingtonWise, a podcast for investors. Wherever you are, stay safe, stay healthy, and keep investing wisely.
