Lots More With Dashiell Bennett

Carmen Rodriguez (0:00)

So, what happened with inflation this morning? Did you guys read the report?

Joe Weisenthal (0:04)

Yeah, it seemed more or less like, the number that people seem to be focusing on is the core ex-housing, which was pretty good. And, or the core services, ex-housing, and so it's like still noisy and bouncy, but like, I don't know, all the smart people seem to like, eh, it's fine enough.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

It's fine, it keeps the trend. It was kind of a boring report, I thought. But the interesting thing is, I guess a lot of the focus is starting to shift from used cars to like the shelter inflation portion. Like the idea of like, this is the thing that people are kind of uncertain about, even though shelter is backward looking. And so there should be some certainty, but I've seen a lot of disagreement about whether or not the deflation in rents is gonna continue.

Joe Weisenthal (0:46)

All of like the smart, like, you know, people who analyze private sector rent data on Twitter, like all those guys like seem to think that there's a lot more in the pipeline. But, you know, I don't know.

Tracy Alloway (0:59)

Fingers crossed.

Joe Weisenthal (1:00)

Fingers crossed.

Tracy Alloway (1:01)

Fingers crossed.

Joe Weisenthal (1:01)

And as we all know, there is a very big gap between measures of rent going down versus actual like you getting lower rent, which will never happen.

I did a deadlift. One, two, three.

Tracy Alloway (1:16)

Hegemony. Hegemony, barges.

Joe Weisenthal (1:21)

This is an after school special, except.

Tracy Alloway (1:23)

I've decided I'm gonna base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the US.

Joe Weisenthal (1:29)

Where's the best squid ink pasta?

Tracy Alloway (1:30)

These are the important questions. Is it robots taking over the world?

Joe Weisenthal (1:33)

No, I think that like in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good job of making the Odd Lots podcast.

And people will say, I don't really need to listen to Joe and Tracy anymore. We do have the perfect guest.

Tracy Alloway (1:49)

Well, in the meantime, this is Lots More.

Joe Weisenthal (1:51)

A weekly chat about whatever's on our minds.

Tracy Alloway (1:54)

This week's guest is Dash Bennett, one of our Odd Lots producers.

Joe Weisenthal (1:57)

This is Carmen.

Carmen Rodriguez (1:58)

Today, Joe, Tracy and Dash are on the road for Bloomberg Screen Time Conference straight from Hollywood, California.

Joe Weisenthal (2:04)

It has been a crazy week. Generally, like this week has not been what I would have expected. Obviously, last weekend with the terrorist attack in Israel, I could have easily imagined a week in which oil prices surge, in which interest rates jump because the Fed is expected to compensate for the oil jump, in which fiscal expansion is further on the menu at a time in which people are saying, already deficits are crazy. Kind of like our conversation with Jay Barry.

And the fact that this week, we didn't get that at all. And in fact, actually, we just got this very mellowing out of the market. I don't know. I think it maybe says something about how extreme the sentiment and positioning was last week with regards to rates and inflation, that we didn't get that story this week.

Tracy Alloway (2:51)

Well, I also think people are still sort of in shock and maybe just digesting everything that's happened. And it feels like the market's sort of rearranging itself for this new reality. And there's a lot of uncertainty about what that might end up looking like. But you're right.

I also thought it was interesting, the number of Fed speakers who started coming out talking about how, oh, well, rates going up, yields going up is a de facto tightening. And it was kind of funny, because I guess in the end, maybe they didn't need to push back that hard given the events of the weekend. But like there was, was it two or three of them who eventually came out? Kash Khari pushed back on that idea, which I thought was interesting.

Joe Weisenthal (3:31)

I've always had a little bit of an intellectual problem with this question, because if you more or less buy the idea, as I do, that rates are a function of expected Fed policy over time, then it's never quite made sense to me the idea that higher rates means you don't have to hike as much, since it seems to me that higher rates are basically saying, no, we expect the Fed will need to hike. There's something circular about the logic.