Barron’s Senior Managing Editor and Deputy Editor speak with Tom Essaye

Barron’s Senior Managing Editor Lauren R. Rublin and Deputy Editor Ben Levisohn speak with Tom Essaye, Founder and President of Sevens Report about the outlook for financial markets, industry sectors, and individual stocks.

Tom Essaye: Absolutely. So the number one message we’re trying to convey in the Sevens Report is for investors to really stay focused on economic growth. And the reason I say that is because if growth can’t hold up, then we have to talk about this rally potentially ending in a very uncomfortable way. And for those of us who have been in the markets for a long time, at least at the start of this century, we’ve seen that happen a few times and it’s very painful. And if you think about investing, those are really the types of markets we want to avoid. So with the Fed cutting rates, we now know that if growth rolls over, they will not be able to cut fast enough to prevent any sort of a slowdown. So to use the analogy, the die has been cast to a point. Now the Fed is cutting and we must see if growth holds up. Everything that’s going on around growth, so how many cuts are they going to have in 2024? What’s going to happen with the election? Is the Chinese stimulus going to be enough? All of those are ancillary issues, but the main issue is growth. Because if growth rolls over, now we have to talk about that being a rally-killing event and those are the big events we want everyone to be able to avoid.