Second-Half Market Outlook & Playbook with Liz Thomas

**Guy Adami** (0:00)
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**Guy Adami** (0:54)
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A warm welcome to the Risk Reversal Podcast. Of course, I'm Guy Adami. More of course, that's Elizabeth Thomas. She of SoFi, dear friend, brilliant individual, and somebody that when she's on the television, and I've said this before, I make sure to turn the sound up. Hello, Elizabeth.

**Liz Thomas** (1:52)
Hello. Do you ever think it's odd that now in this day and age, we record all podcasts on video?
Why do we do that? Why do we still call them podcasts? Aren't they just shows now?

**Guy Adami** (2:03)
What would you call it? You know what you make an excellent point about it?

**Liz Thomas** (2:07)
A video on demand.

**Guy Adami** (2:09)
A vodcast.

**Liz Thomas** (2:10)
A vodcast.

**Guy Adami** (2:12)
Welcome to the Risk Reversal Vodcast.
All right. Enough of the Tom foolery. Although we could do this all day long, as you know. Dropping out of Monday, we're talking on a Thursday, but let's talk about sort of the week that has been and the week that was. And as we get into bank earnings, what has sort of stood out to you? There are a couple of things that have sort of captured my fancy.

**Liz Thomas** (2:36)
Well, if we're talking about the week that was, I mean, obviously we've had a lot of movement in the market, this sort of momentum on, momentum off trade, where we've had semiconductors not doing really well, and then suddenly they rebound. It's almost as if every time we get used to a certain direction, things change again. And I think that's a characteristic of where we are in this market cycle. I expect this sort of volatility to continue. Now, next week starting earning season is exciting. And as usual, the banks are going to set the tone. They kick it off for everybody.
What's been really interesting about financials in general, banks, especially in the last few weeks, is that they've done really well. They've traded well. Now, they've had a couple days here and there where they didn't do so well. But they've traded well in a flattening yield curve environment. So I'm interested to hear from the banks where that good revenue is coming from, what they see for the second half, and whether they're more constructive on things like capital markets activity than they are obviously on the yield curve, because the yield curve is actually providing a headwind for them right now.

**Guy Adami** (3:40)
Well, let's shelve that for a second, because in addition to what we're going to talk about in terms of what's happening this week and potentially next week, we're also going to preview your second half outlook that I'm sure you and Mario, I just like saying it that way, have worked extensively on. Is that fair to say?

**Liz Thomas** (3:58)
No. So we didn't do a written outlook this year because it just didn't seem like it was worth...
Sometimes you don't want to just force content to force content. So I don't feel all that different than I did in the outlook that I put out in December of last year. There are some things that changed and obviously a war that came about, but we didn't create a whole written outlook, although I have been talking about my outlook for the second half for about a week now.