Stephanie Pomboy: Get Ready For A Much Bumpier Ride In 2025

**Adam Taggart** (0:02)
All right, and we should be live. Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money Founder, and your host, Adam Taggart. Welcome you here with some very exciting news for kicking off the new year. One of the most demanded guests on this program is the wonderful Stephanie Pomboy. And one of the things I heard the most throughout 2024 was, hey, can we get more Pomboy? I'm very happy to announce that we do have more Pomboy. Stephanie, how are you doing?

**Stephanie Pomboy** (0:30)
My God, I don't buy any of that, but thank you very much. I know.

**Adam Taggart** (0:36)
Very, very true. And folks, so Stephanie was very kind to reach out to me and say, hey, I'd like to get myself a little bit out there more in 2025 Stephanie produces an unbelievable amount of very highly respected analysis over at her website, macromavens.com.
And she basically said, Adam, I'm interested in coming on Thoughtful Money with some degree of frequency. So I think she and I talked about maybe kicking something off that's going to run bi-weekly at first and then we'll just sort of see how things go from there, if we get initial feedback from you, the audience. So that's what we're kicking off here. Today, Steph is going to just give us a brief update as to what she is seeing right now through her macromavens lens. And then we're just going to open it up to live Q&A from you, the audience. And I see some folks have already started asking some questions here in the live chat. I know some folks sent some questions to you over X earlier, Stephanie. But folks, make sure if you have questions for Stephanie, you ask them there in the live chat. And when we get to the point of the program where we're going to take those, I'll start pulling them out and asking them of Stephanie. But Stephanie, look, that's pretty much all I'm going to do here. I'm going to fade back into the wallpaper and let you take it over. And then I'll come back in when it's time to ask you some clarifying questions.

**Stephanie Pomboy** (1:55)
Well, thank you so much for holding my hand through this, Adam. As you know, this is not my natural environment. Hopefully, I'll be able to manage. And, you know, I did this selfishly because obviously I know what I think, and I'm constantly in that headspace, but I really needed to expose myself to other viewpoints and be challenged and pressed more. And I'm hoping that we can make this a lively conversation. But I guess to just kind of kick things off since it is a new year, and Wall Street has this obligatory annual exercise where people offer up their new ideas for the new year as if something magically changes, you know, in the wee hours of December 31st, that shifts the entire investment landscape. So I guess I feel sort of obligated to participate in this supercilious endeavor in some way. But ultimately, it probably wouldn't surprise most people who are familiar with me that my view for 2025 is not dramatically different from what it was in 2024
What is the expression? Forecast often, I guess that's sort of what I'm sticking with. And, you know, my view for, again, for those who have watched any of my interviews with Adam on this channel, well, no, has been fairly dour about the state of the economy. And I've been waiting, you know, tapping my fingers on the keyboard, waiting for that to be reflected in asset prices. And obviously, that hasn't happened. And I've been very surprised to have seen the, you know, most aggressive Federal Reserve rate hikes in history, you know, larger even in speed and magnitude than Volcker's tightening, unfold without ostensible impact. I mean, clearly, there was a lot of impact. We saw a huge number of corporate bankers, see filings. We're now seeing the increase in consumer credit card delinquencies and auto loan delinquencies. So there's plenty of stress there. But the headline markets have not really reacted at all to the tightening. In fact, their bigger response was to the Fed easing, which was kind of ironic, but not totally surprising.
And so now coming into 2025, I continue to believe that the markets are massively extended relative to the underlying fundamentals. And I think now that it's clear that the Federal Reserve really has very limited runway to provide the interest rate cuts that the markets had anticipated, and that the promise of pro-growth fiscal policy isn't going to be as easy or quick to deliver upon, given what we're seeing in Washington, DC already. So I think that this could be a very bumpy year for the markets, for risk assets specifically. And so basically, I'm carrying my 2024 forecast into the new year without apology. So I guess that's a starting point. And from there, we could take some questions.