Ryan Detrick Sees More Upside as the Economy Defies the Doubters

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Thanks so much for that. Marlee, we're joining me now here at the desk to discuss the market outlook. It's Ryan Detrick, who's the Chief Market Strategist over at Carson Group. Thank you so much for your time. We were just discussing your lunch. Marlee caught us. All right, well, you looked into your crystal ball at the start of this year, and you said that it was going to be the year of inflationary growth. Look, the economy is holding up. I was just looking at the Atlanta GDP, up 5.8%, right? I mean, look, Ryan, even if we get to five, that's more than double what we saw in Q1. I mean, the earnings are holding up, the inflation prints that we just got are looking pretty tamed at this point. I mean, how are you putting it all together?

**Ryan Detrick** (0:35)
Well, as we were saying, I had some pizza in your fine city and didn't spill anything on me. That's why your jacket's closed, right? No, no.
But listen, we probably won't hit that 5%. We've seen these high numbers for the Atlanta GDP, but the reality is second half of the year looks pretty good from an economic point of view. I mean, we can get into the earnings and all the stuff, but retail sales come out tomorrow.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:53)
Yeah.

**Ryan Detrick** (0:53)
We'll see. I'm running around your city. It looks pretty crowded. I mean, people are still doing a lot here.
You know, some interesting things. The New York Fed has that quarterly update on how households are doing, right? And the reality just came out two days ago. There are less foreclosures now than there were the quarter before. That's pretty good. Look at how many people are in delinquency with loans. That's down two quarters in a row. We hear all this negative stuff. Those are two things I don't think many people are talking about, and there's more we can get into, but I think the economy looks like it really wants to go higher, led by labor, and we'll probably dive more into that.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:22)
Yeah. And then you look at a name like Brinker International, for instance, this week. I mean, we should obviously have some really good numbers. I mean, people obviously still going out, they're still eating, they're still spending money. But you say that, at the same time, I think what's been catching a lot of attention, these headlines around credit card debt this week as well.
I mean, do you think the consumer is in trouble, or you're still playing the consumer?

**Ryan Detrick** (1:43)
We don't think the consumer is in trouble, and that's true. You hit like nominal highs in credit card debt. Yes, I call it denominator blindness, because you got to pay attention to the denominator, right?

**SPEAKER_1** (1:52)
Sure.

**Ryan Detrick** (1:52)
That's a numerator. There's incredible wealth created, as we all know, with housing and the stock market up 100% since 2023
So there's lots of ways to slice and dice it. And listen, the housing market's weak. We have a 30-year yield as high as it's been since 2007, yields higher, housing market's struggling. I mean, it is surprising. I wouldn't say surprising, because started this year, we said it'd be an inflationary growth environment. We expected inflation between 3%-3% with a strong economy, with strong earnings, with the bull market is still going. But the consumer's taking it in stride so far, these higher yields across the board.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:23)
So far, so good. We're hanging in there. Look, I do want to get that to two of your out of consensus calls for the second half, and that's the Fed's not going to hike, and the labor market is going to perform a lot better.

**Ryan Detrick** (2:35)
So we released our media outlook about a month ago, give or take. Obviously, a month ago, everybody said the Fed's going to hike. We've been saying for a while, the Fed's going to run it hot, right? Yes, inflation is hot. But then you look at the data we just had yesterday and today, it's still higher inflation than probably anybody wants. But listen, year over year, it's gone lower. There are some positive under there. Now, we think with shelters specifically, we mentioned about 42% of core CPI, we might hit a trough in shelters. That's been pulling down inflation. We have some concerns. Inflation's still a little on the hot side, but it's all about what the Fed's going to do. Again, we don't think they're going to cut, I'm sorry, hike. We think they're going to continue to kind of run it hot, and that's where we are. Now, the labor market, to make it quick, I know we just had some weak-ish data last month with down 23,000 jobs, which was kind of weak, had some revisions lower, but you still have initial jobless claims down around 200,000. You still have continuing claims that have been going lower.