Jim Paulsen Sees a Growth Scare Coming | The 34 Charts That Make Him Cautious

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**Jack Forehand** (1:00)
Despite remaining long term bullish, Jim Paulsen has seen some warning signs recently for the economy, stocks in general, and particularly tech. In the latest episode of The Jim Paulsen Show, Jim breaks down what he is seeing and uses 34 charts to explain what the data is telling him. We are sharing this episode in the Excess Returns feed, but to receive future episodes, subscribe to The Jim Paulsen Show on your preferred podcast platform using the links in the episode description. Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoy the show. Jim, welcome back. Thanks for joining us today.

**Jim Paulsen** (1:26)
All thanks for having me, guys.

**Jack Forehand** (1:28)
We'd like to have you on these monthly discussions to talk about the economy and the data that you're paying attention to and highlighting for your readers at Paulsen Perspectives, which is your substack newsletter. You spent a lot of time looking at a lot of different unique indicators that you've tracked for years, and I think that this discussion, just given the raw number of charts and different things we're going to look at, is going to do a good job of highlighting the things that you're paying attention to. But where we, I think, always like to start with you is just try to get your take on where you think we are generally with the economy, and if anything has kind of changed, are you paying attention to anything specifically is kind of coming to the top of your list from our conversation from last month.

**Jim Paulsen** (2:11)
Right. Well, I think probably the biggest news is just the jobs numbers and then followed up by today's inflation numbers. That are, job numbers were really weak, and inflation numbers were real benign, and we put that together and people have done a 180 on their tightening expectations out of the FED, and bond yields have come off their straight up size cycle. I think that's kind of the biggest change since we spoke last time.
I'm still kind of, I guess, in the camp that economic growth is going to slow more than people appreciate at the moment, and inflation is not going to be the issue.
And it's going to be more concerned about growth, particularly on the consumer side of the equation. And I think that's going to lead a little bit to a sentiment shift from inflation fear to growth fear or recession fear, quote unquote, something that has just kind of gone AWOL here this year, where there's been no concern about that. I think that's going to kind of raise its head again a little bit. I think we've covered up ongoing weakness in general. We certainly had a pick up in the economy a little bit the first part of this year, no doubt about it across the spectrum. But a big chunk of what makes people feel mostly good about the economy is what's happened with capital spending. And that's tied to AI, and it's really great. But there's just a lot of the rest of it that still I think is not nearly as healthy and I think ultimately will kind of lead to reigniting some growth fears. And again, I won't be surprised at all. In fact, I kind of expect the Fed will be easing here before the year's out.

**Jack Forehand** (4:01)
Are you still thinking that tech might see a little bit of weakness and correction? I think when we talked last month, it was sort of like maybe a 10 And we kind of got that in semis. But what's your general take on sort of the technology sector in here?

**Jim Paulsen** (4:16)
Well, the tech sector has already been down like 15% from its highs at one point this year. So it's been really, really volatile.