Today's number, 35. That's Punxsutawney Phil's percentage accuracy rate in predicting either a longer winter or an early spring. A reminder that our nation's foremost meteorologist is a large rodent who makes guesses. And so is our president. Money market's mad. If money is evil, then that building is hell. The show goes on! The folks in there are watching the show, show! Welcome to Prof G Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is February 3rd. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices climbed after data showed manufacturing activity expanded the most in nearly four years. Treasury yields also rose, as did the dollar. Meanwhile, the gold and silver sell-off moderated. More on that in a moment. And finally, President Trump said the US and India have reached a trade deal and are lowering tariffs immediately. Okay, what else is happening? President Trump nominated Kevin Walsh to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. If the Senate confirms him, Walsh will take over in May when Jerome Powell's term expires. Trump said Walsh is, quote, central casting for the role and promised that he will never let you down. The dollar strengthened after Trump's announcement, but US stocks declined. Now, One big question is weighing on investors. Will Walsh lead an independent central bank, or will he simply deliver all the rate cuts that the president wants? Here to discuss this new pick and what it means for the future of the Fed, we're speaking with Mark Zandy, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. Mark, welcome back to Prof G Markets. Hey, Ed, it's good to be with you. Thanks for the opportunity. So, Kevin Walsh, I guess we'll just start with your reactions. What do you make of that pick? Reasonably good choice, Ed. I think, you know, his strength is he's been on the Fed before during the financial crisis. He was Ben Bernanke's right-hand man during that period. He's born of Wall Street. He was an investment banker, so he knows markets. He's a lawyer by training. So I think he has all the credentials. He knows central bankers around the world. so he can talk to whomever he needs to. So I think it's a reasonably good pick. The reaction from the markets has been kind of interesting. The dollar strengthened stocks fell. A lot of people are saying that the markets reaction is basically telling us that Kevin Walsh is the new Paul Volcker. I just wanted to get your reactions to that characterization. Do you think that makes sense? And what did you make of how markets have been reacting? Yeah, I don't know. I'd read too much into markets. I mean, the cleanest read is from the bond market, the 10-year treasury yield, and that kind of moved to basis point or two. So not much of a reaction. You know, there was a sell-off in gold prices, silver prices. You know, maybe I think investors were using gold and silver kind of as a hedge against the tail risk that the president picked someone else that wasn't going to be quite as respectable and good. And once it was clear that Warsh was the chosen one, those prices fell back in. But broadly speaking, I think markets expected Warsh and felt pretty good about the choice. So I think the market reaction is pretty consistent with that view. It is interesting that, you know, we're all wondering who's it going to be. Is it going to be him? Is it going to be Kevin Haas? Is it going to be Waller? he went with the guy that appears to have perhaps the strongest spine. I mean, my reaction was he was kind of the best option that was on the table. You know, he was being a little bit of a sycophant in the months leading up to this election. But overall, I mean, it seems like he's probably going to be the most independent of the options. I'm just wondering if you agree with that. And if so, why did Trump go with him? Why didn't he go with a total sycophant? Yeah, you know, the other choices were, I think, also good, reasonably good. I mean, you mentioned Kevin Hassett. You know, I think he would have done just as well. I think he's got an intellectual North Star. He's an economist by training. Waller, of course, is a very good economist. and I think would fight for Fed independence. I don't know the fellow from BlackRock that well, but I think generally I think they were all pretty good choices. But you're right. It is interesting. I mean, you'd say Kevin Warsh is more of the hawk, at least historically, been more supportive of policies that would keep interest rates higher rather than lower. And, of course, the president's made it very clear he wants lower interest rates. So it's unusual in that sense. But, you know, Kevin Warsh is, I think the president said it, right from central casting, right? I mean, he looks like a central banker. He's very smooth. He speaks very articulately. He speaks definitively. You know, you can see why the president might like him. He comes from money, wealth. You know, he's married into the S.D.L.R. of Fortune. I think that probably resonates. And because at the end of the day, a choice is a very personal decision and you've got to feel very comfortable with the person you're picking if you're president. And I think that just helped. So I don't know that the president was too focused on what Kevin Warsh has said in the past about quantitative easing or, you know, what the Fed should be doing with regard to interest rates. They're more focused on these non-monetary related factors when making his decision to choose him. What do you think this does mean for the Fed and for interest rates going forward? Is this going to mean, you know, that we're going to not cut rates as quickly as the president would like? I think, you know, here's the important point about the Fed in the current context is Kevin Warsh is just one vote, right? I mean, this is a committee of 12 and you've got to get a majority of votes. And I think the – you know, there's a couple, three votes that are inclined to lower rates almost regardless of what the economic data say. But the vast majority of members of the FOMC, which includes five presidents of district Federal Reserve banks, they're not going to vote that way. So I think at least in the near future, the foreseeable future, I think we're on safe ground here that we're going to get decisions, interest rate decisions that are determined by how the economy is performing as opposed to what the political environment is like. The other thing to consider is everything kind of sticks to script. Kevin Warsh won take the chair until May and you already pretty close to the election So that when I think the president would desperately want the rate cuts But you know it getting late in the game already And you know this may drag on for longer just because of getting him through the Senate confirmation process. So I'm not sure when this really matters to the president, Kevin is going to, Kevin Warsh is going to have significant sway, at least enough sway here to get those rate cuts that the president wants. Yeah, I was going to ask about the Senate confirmation because Senator Tom Tillis said he would block any nominee until that DOJ probe is resolved. Of course, this was the Department of Justice's investigation into Jerome Powell, which I guess is ongoing. and he's saying not going to happen until you, I guess, shut that down. What do you think will happen with this Senate confirmation process? Do you think that this is going to be a sort of long, drawn out, complicated process? Or what does that all mean for the timeline? Yeah, well, I think Senator Murkowski, too. Also, she's a Senate Republican from Alaska. She said the same thing as Tillis. She's not going to vote for Warsh until that's settled – the DOJ's suit against Powell is settled. My sense is that the president will figure out a way to stand down on the DOJ lawsuit. I don't think that's a winning strategy. And I think he wants to get Warsh in a chair. So I'm not sure how he does it or what form that takes. But I think at the end of the day, that's what's going to happen here. because there really isn't anything there. And everyone knows it. And I think the president ultimately will decide that it's just not a winning strategy. And if there's one thing he's really, really good at, it's at pivoting. And I think he'll pivot here. That'd be my sense of it. My final question before we let you go, this will be the end of Powell's tenure. What will his legacy be? How will textbooks and history books remember Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve Chair? Well, I sure hope it's not that the battles he's having with this president, that may be ending up to be what goes down in the history books, or at least what people pay attention to. I hope that's not the case because he's been a very good Fed chair. I mean, he's navigated this economy through some very difficult times, the pandemic being the most obvious. And that was pretty difficult to navigate. And, you know, at the end of the day, here we are. We're at full employment or pretty close, 4.4 percent unemployment rate. Inflation is a little on the high side. But if not for those tariffs, we'd be right back to the Fed's target. So if his goal is those two mandates, full employment and low and stable inflation, check, check, he did it. So I think he should go down in history as a good Fed chair. And the other thing is, he's the prototypical central banker. He works to gain consensus. He knows his colleagues well. He works with them well. He is the Fed. And I think hopefully we get a lot more Fed chairs in the future like Chair Powell. All right, Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody's Analytics. Mark, always love having you. Thank you. Thank you, Ed. I appreciate that. After the break, Disney stock takes a ton. 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Disney's earnings beat both top and bottom line expectations and also reported record revenues in its Experiences division, streaming out a great quarter too, with profits rising more than 70%. But the stock dropped as much as 7%. The results were overshadowed by lower international tourism, higher costs for sports rights, and continued weakness in Disney's traditional entertainment division. The earnings also came ahead of a pivotal board meeting this week to choose Bob Iger's successor. Okay, here to help us break down these earnings and what to expect from that meeting. We're speaking with Rich Greenfield, partner in TMT, analyst at Light Shed Partners. Rich, great to have you back on the show. Thanks, Ed. It's a pretty momentous week. I mean, you know, I think all signs point to what we've been waiting a very, very long time for, which is who's going to succeed Bob Iger. And again, we thought we all knew that a few years ago with Bob Chapek, but that obviously didn't last very long. And so I think everyone sort of believes this time And Bob really means that he actually is leaving. And so, you know, all eyes are on this succession story. Does that explain what happened with the share price? I mean, the stock's down 7% after a pretty great earnings call. I mean, overall, it's pretty good. What explains the movement in the stock right now? I think the fear on earnings is that the March quarter, their fiscal Q2, because Disney's a fiscal September company. And so their fiscal Q2 is not great. You know, there's a lot of a number of headwinds. You know, the theme park attendance looks like it's going to be flat to down. They're signaling weakness in international travel to the U.S. And they're really putting the majority of the earnings growth they're expecting this year on the back half of the fiscal year. And I think, you know, the minute you say to investors, the current outlook is not so good, but we'll pick it up or it'll improve later. You know, people generally, you know, that is generally a good signal to I'm scared they're going to miss numbers. Right. And then add on to it. Ed. The other piece of this is not just is Bob Iger leaving, but again, according to press reports, and this is unverified at the moment that we recording but the story goes is that Iger is also going to leave before his December 31st contract year end So just imagine you an investor you hearing earnings are very back half weighted and Bob's leaving sooner than you expected. Right. Like, you know, and theme parks, which is the number one reason people own Disney, like sure, ESPN and Disney Plus. But if you look at like what people get excited about to own Disney Now, given the size of the business, it's really about its theme park and cruises. So their experiences segment, as Disney calls it, that business facing sort of, you know, headwinds from an attendance standpoint spooks people. And look, it may get better. But, you know, attendance grew one percent this quarter, but they were comping against hurricanes. So organically, it was flat to down. Sounds like it's going to be flat to down in the U.S. in fiscal March Q2. And then the question is, can they actually accelerate that in the back half of the fiscal year? And I think you're seeing from investors today, they are nervous. Yes. When we just look at the succession plan here, who's in the running? Who might it be next? I mean, look, we've gone out in our top 20 predictions for the year and said it would be Josh DeMauro, who is currently the head of the theme parks. You know, I think go back to what I just said a minute ago. The reason investors own this stock, like I can't say this enough times, they own it for theme parks. So to choose someone who is not the theme park person, I think at this point would be strange. Dana Walden is a great executive. She's had an incredible career. She came from Fox when Disney bought Fox. She came over. she has an incredible resume in terms of what she's been able to achieve creating content over her career. But again, if you think about what Disney is all about, it's not really about television, which is Dana's forte. And it's really not about the TV business at all. Again, it's really, you know, I really think about Disney is really two things right now. It's the creative engine on the film side that is driving theme parks and consumer products, Disney Plus, but it really, you know, comes down to so much of this is the, you know, the high profile movie content and the theme parks. And I think that's just not her focus. And so I'd be surprised if Disney went in that direction. I mean, look, there is always a wild card that either it's a dual CEO and or that it is somebody from the outside. But again, every single data point seems to move point towards it being Josh. And then I think the really big question for your viewers and listeners is, is this an indication of Disney pivoting? Like, will there be a strategic pivot? Are they just keeping all of the assets they have today? Again, Josh comes from the theme park segment. He's not a TV guy. He's not an ESPN sports guy. Do they reconfigure the company? And our bet is, is that he's going to lead investors to believe that structural change, meaning separating the companies the way a Warner Brothers has been, is in process of separating, selling a piece to Netflix and spinning off their linear TV assets. That's obviously what Comcast just did with Versant. We think there's a lot of logic to Disney simplifying its corporate structure over the course of the next couple of years. It wasn't going to happen under Bob Iger. It could certainly happen in 27 under Josh. And would that corporate restructuring involve moving the theme parks and experiences business to its own unit? Is that going to be sort of the versant for Disney? No, I think you would keep theme parks and studio and Disney Plus all in one unit. So you'd have the production of movie content, the production of TV content, the distribution on, you know, Disney Plus. You would have, you know, the Hulu business. But then you would take ESPN and ABC and all of those TV stations and ship it off into a separate entity. And so theme park, studio and streaming all stay in one unit. And essentially what you would call, Ed, linear TV, which I know when we're talking about a show that streams online, seems a little bit outdated at this point in time. You would take the very profitable. Remember, these are huge profit engines for Disney. I mean, I don't want to make light of the fact that ESPN and ABC are incredibly profitable businesses. Yeah. But they're just not growth businesses in the way that the other assets are. And so I think you would capitalize them differently. Maybe they would look for their own M&A over the next few years. I mean, we continue to believe that Disney, if you got rid of TV and got rid of sports, could you lean into video gaming, interactive entertainment? You know, think about the Epic Games where they already have a joint venture with or think about Roblox. Like if you think about what your viewers and listeners and what their kids are doing, it looks very different than watching linear TV in 2026. And so I think there's a lot of rationale for why a new Disney CEO would really rethink what the business should look like for the next decade. 100 percent. One that we haven't gotten your views on. It's been a while since we had you on the program is the situation between Warner Brothers and Netflix. I haven't heard about that. What's going on there? Just can we get your updated perspective? I know that you're going down to D.C. for the hearing. um what are your views on on on the warner brothers situation and how this is all going to shake out i mean look netflix is currently the winning bidder yeah been selected by warner brothers paramount doesn't like it paramount is trying to run a hostile um proxy battle to try to win over warner brothers shareholders i think the challenge right now is you know the approach that Paramount is taking is essentially, hey, we don't need to raise our bid anymore. We will just wait this out. We think we're going to get meaningful regulatory approval. And we think that that will push Warner Brothers shareholders to pressure management to take and reconsider our bid. I think that's unlikely. I mean, just given where the Netflix bid is at twenty seven seventy five in cash. The stub, which is going to be spun off, probably has more value than what Paramount has talked about publicly. And so I think for shareholders, I think unless Paramount is willing to meaningfully raise its bid, it's in a tough spot. And I'll be honest, Ed, you know, leverage looking at the media business, especially a lot of TV assets, you know, legacy media, linear TV, being levered when you need to go through a dramatic investment cycle, like if you look at Paramount. I was out at UFC two weeks ago out in Vegas. Like they need to go through. They just spent a billion one on UFC. Those are the types of big, bold investments Paramount should be making. Like they're trying to change how you think about Paramount Plus. They want your viewers to have a reason to keep coming back to Paramount Plus Great But to make those types of investments not having leverage or having low leverage is a real asset And so levering up to seven times or maybe more to buy WBD sounds a little crazy from our standpoint And I actually wonder if we're past the point where if I'm really looking at this, like unless Larry Ellison is willing to put up a lot more cash of his own, but levering this company seven times, you know, at closing before you get all the synergies, levering it that high feels to me a bit dangerous. And I think if I were sitting there, if I was David Ellison, 42, 43 years old, having, you know, 20, 30 years, 40 years in front of me, I think I would look at this and say, I can invest and build for the future. I don't need to over lever this to buy Warner Brothers. And so I actually think there's a scenario where they probably won't just walk away. I think they really don't want to walk away, but they probably should. And it'll be interesting tomorrow. There is certainly a view in D.C. that, oh, my God, Netflix and Warner Brothers is too big and scary. But, you know, on the flip side, you know, like look at YouTube, right? Like the elephant in the room, as you know, we've talked about on your show. YouTube is the monster and it's it's the number one reason or the number one use of anything watched on the TV is YouTube. Like that's hard to fathom. And so the reality that Netflix buying Warner Brothers or Netflix buying HBO, it is effectively, you know, it's like a one point increase to Netflix's market share on the TV. YouTube is still larger. I mean, YouTube is larger than Disney. If you take Disney+, ABC, ESPN, Hulu, ESPN+, YouTube is still meaningfully larger. And so like this idea that like Netflix can't buy HBO, I think it's a I understand where it comes from, but I think it is not a well-educated view on what the actual competitive landscape and what your viewers are actually doing when they get home from work. the competitive choices of where they spend their time, I think if you really look at it honestly, there is tremendous competition and there really shouldn't be a reason why that transaction is blocked. Okay, Rich Greenfield, partner and TMT analyst at Light Shed Partners. Rich, thank you. Thanks, Ed. Well, gold is swinging wildly yet again, this time to the downside. Friday was its worst single-day loss since the 1980s. It fell roughly 10% in just one day. Meanwhile, silver got hit even harder, falling nearly 30%. And then yesterday, gold and silver ETFs continued the sell-off, both closing down roughly 4%. All in all, roughly $15 trillion worth of gold and silver was erased in less than 24 hours. For reference, that is roughly equivalent to about one-fifth of the entire market value of America's stock market. Just staggering. So, it's getting to the point here where gold is almost behaving like a meme stock. I mean, you look at GameStop as an example, which will go up and down 10, 15, 20% on any given day. You see the same thing with meme stocks like AMC. You see the same thing with MicroStrategy. Well, gold, the most valuable commodity by market cap in the world, is now behaving in a very similar way. It's now acting like a meme stock. Same with silver, which raises kind of a crucial question here. if they're acting like meme stocks, is it possible that gold and silver actually are meme stocks? Now, this view will upset a lot of people, especially the people who are very bullish on gold and silver, the people who say that this is a global secular trend, that gold is a hedge against inflation, that it's a hedge against debasement, that the dollar is dying, People are shifting over to hard assets. And all of that might be true. But the meme stock theory tells us that the real reason that gold is surging by this much and also crashing by this much is because it is simply the sexiest trade right now. Like GameStop in 2021 or AMC after that, gold and silver are simply the next shiny objects to move in and out of your portfolio. Everyone's talking about it. Everyone's writing about it. Everyone's supposedly getting rich off of it. That might not explain the entire run-up, but it could explain at least some of it. And in fact, our friend Josh Brown, the CEO of Ritholtz, he had an interesting perspective that would support this theory. He said that the reason so many people are getting into gold and silver right now is simply because the brokerage apps are recommending them. He wrote, quote, It's like a Spotify playlist. None of these people have any fundamental or even technical opinion on Silver. They are buying it because the app is suggesting it. He then went on to compare this whole dynamic to Netflix. He said, quote, why did Bridgerton become a hit show? Because Netflix decided to serve it up to everyone who just watched Downton Abbey. It's an algorithm. There is nothing more to it. End quote. This is obviously a theory, and it might not explain everything, but I'd be willing to bet that it explains at the very least quite a lot. In fact, SLV, which is the largest silver ETF, is currently the top trending ticker on Wall Street bets right now. GLD, which is the largest gold ETF, is the third most mentioned. Retail is obsessed with gold and silver right now. Meanwhile, you look at what the central banks are doing. The guys who are supposedly the drivers of this whole rally, well, as our other friend Robert Armstrong pointed out last week, central banks actually reduced their gold purchases by more than a third last year. Now, all of this would kind of align with what we said last week. That is right after gold breached $5,000 for the first time ever, we said that the gold trade was not so much an investment thesis as it is a story. A story which, as we also said, most likely resembles some form of a bubble. Now, who knows what's going to happen to gold tomorrow? who knows what's going to happen to gold the next day. But if you were going just off of the chart, if you were simply looking at the line, which was going up and up and up, and now down and down and down, you would have to admit it is starting to look a lot like Meme Town. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss, edited by Joel Paston, and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our research team is Dan Chalant. Isabella Kinsel, Chris Nodonohue, and Mia Silverio. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from Prof G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomorrow.
