The 2025 Rally: Real Strength or Market Mirage? — ft. Kevin Gordon

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Today's number, $15 billion.

That's the estimated economic value that honeybees generate every year.

At unrelated topic, the head of HR has called me and told me that I can no longer refer to my assistant as honey.

So now I just call her jiggles.

Listen to me.

Markets are bigger than us.

What you have here is a structural change in the world distribution.

Cash is trash.

Stocks look pretty attractive.

Something's going to break.

Forget about it.

Is that wrong, Ed?

Ed's got his head in his hands.

Ed likes to think he's important and above all this.

Yeah, Ed.

Yeah, Ed.

That's right.

You're way too sophisticated for my humor.

Do you want to hear my story about HR?

I don't have a choice.

No, you don't.

Okay, good.

Gartner acquires L2.

And then on a Friday afternoon, have I told you the story?

Friday afternoon, I get a call from the global head.

This is like two weeks up post-closing.

From the Gartner head of HR saying, you need to call me right away.

This is Lois, you know,

Lois whatever, HR,

and you need to call me right away.

I'm like, okay, I call her back and I get voicemail.

I literally call her.

And by the way, that's a great weekend to know, to not know why the head of global HR is saying you need to call her right away.

And she finally, she calls me back at like noon on Monday, and I am pissed off and I've got all the money I need.

I'm like, what the fuck are you thinking waiting all weekend to call me back?

I'm like, how do you think my weekend went?

And so I read her the riot act, which she was not used to because, you know, she's used to everyone kissing her ass.

And I said, what's up?

And she said at the all hands, so this is what had happened.

We have these all hands meetings every Monday morning.

And first thing we do is introduce introduce the new people.

And this new kid said, hi, I'm Bobby,

new employee from Vanderbilt.

And everyone introduced themselves.

And at the end, I say, does anyone have any questions?

And people have questions about the business.

And Bobby goes, just I'm curious, what's the vacation policy?

And I said, the vacation policy is new employees don't ask what the vacation policy is.

And everyone laughed.

And I said, to go talk to so-and-so.

I'm sure she'll let you know.

And the head of HR said, you can't discourage people from taking vacation.

That's illegal.

Anyways,

that was my run-in with HR, Ed.

I don't think you've ever had an HO department, right?

If we have a head of HR, it's time for me to leave.

When you're the head of the company, there's no HO.

I feel like HR is like the land of common sense in a company that's void of common sense.

Treat people with decency.

I mean, what HR, okay, at a big company, you need a head of people, and these are incredibly strategic, thoughtful people, and the best HR managers are really a key part of a team.

But basically, our head of HR is Catherine.

So I don't like to deal with any of you.

I don't want to hear about your problems.

I want to hear about all your like millennial, like, expectant bullshit.

So, I have Catherine deal with all of it.

So, but I used to,

I mean, I, I loved being in the services business, except for the employees and the clients.

Other than that, it was just an awesome, I love business except for the employees and the clients.

But people are so fucking messy.

It's so interesting.

You really do.

You really do not like the messiness.

I'm done with it.

Having built companies.

Because you've never been down with it or because

you've dealt with it for too long as a CEO.

One of the things I just love about this business, other than we're killing it and we're relevant and making a shit ton of money, which also helps, is

I have outsourced all of the people shit to Catherine.

Catherine, every Friday afternoon, I let Catherine call me and vent about what fucking children you all are.

And I just let her vent to me.

And I'm like, yeah, that's got to be rough.

Let me know how it goes.

Let me know how it goes.

Because I used to be that person on the front line, you know, telling some kid who didn't wear shoes to work why he's not going to get a 40% raise and that he should go to Salesforce tomorrow.

And I'm not, I'm not, you know, giving in to his, him holding a gun to my head as he tells me, like, our cloud integration is halfway done.

And if he leaves, like, the firm's not going to work tomorrow.

I've literally had those conversations.

Like, okay, so you're, you're in here threatening me and in the midst of tech mail, we used to call it.

Anyways,

yeah, I'm not big on heads of, I've never had a head of HR.

I usually haven't had a CFO.

I'm usually all over the numbers.

I usually don't, I'm usually the CFO is what I am.

I like to stay very close to the numbers.

Lesson to the people.

Yeah.

Well, if we've got a great

that went off course.

That went off course.

We've got a great guest.

We've got Kevin Gordon coming on.

Let's get into this interview.

Let's do it.

Here's our conversation with Kevin Gordon, director and senior investment strategist at Charles Schwab.

Kevin, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

Good to be here.

So just some background on who you are.

You are a director and senior investment strategist at Charles Schwab.

You work very closely with Lizanne Saunders.

We've had on this podcast or on the Profit Conversations podcast.

She is the chief investment strategist.

You do a lot of work with her.

You are seeing a lot of points of light in the markets.

And we wanted to bring you on for that reason.

We want to get your take on what's happened this year.

But also, you're a lot younger than most of the guests we have on this show.

And we are excited to have younger perspectives on the show.

So thank you for joining us.

Let's get into this.

I think the first thing I would ask you, we've had a bunch of crazy stuff happen in 2025.

We've had a new president come in.

We've had tariffs and then not tariffs and then tariffs again.

We've had a market crash.

We've had one of the sharpest rebounds in history.

And now we're looking at record highs.

Just as you look back on 2025,

what have been your biggest takeaways so far?

Yeah, it's been remarkable.

And actually, I was thinking back to, you know, I was speaking at a conference in June with Lazan and I had made this comment when we were giving the keynote, but I had a friend text me that morning.

It was right around when we got to

unchanged year-to-date for the SP 500.

I had a friend text me and he said, Hey, I just checked the market this year, and it looks like it's been pretty quiet.

And I said, Man, what a lovely rock this person gets to live under, where they don't have to check it every day and see the turmoil that we went through in April.

But it sort of speaks to the fact that, yeah, there was a ton of turmoil and it manifested in a really different way this year than it did last year.

And I think the 2024 to 25 switch or comparison is really remarkable because last year, you know, there was barely any scarring at the index level.

All of the turmoil was underneath the market surface.

So you only got to sort of a traditional correction for the SP at the index level.

But the average member

and average member's maximum drawdown was more than 20%.

Our view coming into 2025, when we wrote our outlook for this year, was that you were probably going to see that dynamic flipped.

Much of it, almost all of it, our thinking at the time was going to be driven by policy, both on the tariff front, but also on the immigration front, which gets, you know, shockingly still to me gets less attention than tariffs.

I think it's a much bigger part of the longer-term growth story for the economy, which we can get into later.

But, you know, admittedly, we didn't think it would manifest or happen as fast as it did when you got to early April.

But that's really our outlook for the remainder of the year as we look even to the back half.

And frankly, for a good chunk of the next couple of years, if you think about the world that we live in now, which is one that's driven a lot more by policy that's coming out of the White House in particular.

And, you know, normally Washington is this kind of sleepier, slower-moving beast.

Don't really have to pay a lot of attention to it.

But when you're talking about two huge components of the economy, which is trade and then also labor, you know, they become much stronger drivers of day-to-day activity.

activity.

So I think that, you know, as we turn to the back half of the year, it's not necessarily that we're, you know outright skeptical of the rally or skeptical of what the economy has shown so far this year um it's just that when you actually listen to what companies are saying and we have you know a ton of clients that are our you know small business owners up to really large you know executives um we represent a pretty good chunk of the you know the average retail investor out there um and when you talk to them and and see how they're thinking about this everything tariff related and how this is playing out, a lot of the adjustments to pricing or a lot of the expected hits to growth are not really expected to come for a while.

So, even though you were in that really strong turmoil phase from April into a little bit into May, it was never our thinking that you were going to see everything unfold all at once in terms of the overall impact to the economy.

So, I still think we have a lot to work through.

I do think that hopefully, you know, the worst is behind us in terms of the depth and the breadth of what was announced in April.

I think that's been one of the reasons that the market's been able to rally.

But, in terms of this index-like volatility, both to the upside and the downside, I'm not sure that I'm not sure we're past that.

When you look at the

look at the record highs that we're seeing in the SP, that we're seeing in the NASDAQ, I think there are multiple different conclusions that a lot of people are drawing from that.

And maybe it's worth just kind of going through them a little bit and figuring out kind of where you stand on that.

I mean, on the one hand, we're seeing this tariff turmoil, and it could be that the markets are saying all these headlines are an overreaction.

These tariffs aren't really a big deal, and it's going to be fine.

That could be something.

It could be that this is the taco trade.

It could be that the markets are saying these tariffs probably aren't going to happen, or if they do happen, they're going to happen in

a smaller way than people realize.

It could be that the markets are just too optimistic, that they're just being a little bit irrational.

It could be that,

you know, as I mean, one of the things that I slightly struggle struggle with is, you know, the market is a prediction machine.

I stand on this, this, I'm in the same place as you, which is tariff impacts are going to come.

They're just going to come a little bit later than we might expect.

But at the same time, you would think that the market is looking at that, pricing all of that in, modeling out the future cash flows, modeling out the tariff costs, and yet we're looking at record highs.

So I'm just wondering with all of that and all of those potential conclusions, how do you kind of think about that?

And how do you analyze it?

What would be your view on what the market thinks?

I know that's an impossible question, but let's try.

Well, I think it's a, you know, I like that you put the market in quotes because there is a difference when you talk about, you know, the market at the index level versus at the sector or even at the industry level.

And I think, you know, we, we, we have recommendations that we put out at the sector level across all 11.

We don't go as granular as the 25 industries because it's just a little bit too, it's a little bit too granular.

However, I have found myself peeling back the onion a little bit more to that layer lately.

Because if you actually look at performance, whether it's year-to-date, whether it's since the April 8th lows, what has lagged the most are those industries that are sort of at the epicenter of the tariff drama.

It's

food companies and retailers and consumer staples.

You broaden that out to consumer discretionary.

It's the auto companies, even this earnings season.

I mean, look at the two opposite ends of the spectrum where you've got the banks that were out of the gate first, which did quite exceptionally well.

And then you have a lot of auto companies that have struggled and mentioned, you know, a lot of the profit that they've taken from a tariff standpoint.

The difference, though, between a lot of those industries, if you look at something like banks or semiconductors, I mean, their weighted average profit margins are upwards of 20 to 30, sometimes 40 percent.

And they're a much larger share of the overall market and market cap terms.

If you look at kind of what is traditional old economy stuff, like autos or manufacturing, it's a smaller portion of the market.

So I actually think a big reason that we've seen such a strong and

miraculous rebound in the market is, yes, those kind of heavier weight sectors or industries or companies in some instances have really driven you back to those new all-time highs.

I'm going to pass it to Scott in a second, but just one thought that occurred to me.

It appears that the way that you describe it is that there's a sort of bifurcation in the market.

Companies and sectors that are getting hurt by the tariffs and the companies and sectors that aren't.

And it's been a tale of two sectors, I guess we would call it.

I think the way that you could sort of make the distinction here and what we are increasingly seeing with these tariffs is that we have made this very arbitrary line that doesn't really make any sense in today's modern economy of physical goods versus digital services.

And for whatever reason, we've decided that we're only going to tariff physical goods.

And it's kind of a logistical thing.

It's easier to sort of track a physical good that is shipped to America and we're going to tariff those things.

But as you describe the differences we've seen in the market, it feels as though those are kinds of the two buckets that we can categorize the market into.

If you're in the business of services, as most of the most valuable companies in America are, you're fine.

because for whatever reason we've said services are okay.

But if you're in the business of making and shipping physical items, things that we can touch and feel, then you're not as fine.

And I was wondering if you would agree that that is sort of the right distinction to make.

And if you think we could characterize what we've seen this year like that.

Yeah, I think generally, not only in this environment is that...

has that been the dynamic, but actually post-pandemic, that has kind of been, you know, in this past five-year cycle, that's sort of been the dynamic where everything manufacturing related has really struggled.

I mean, we were sort of calling it, and we weren't the only ones to call it or the first ones to call it, but we were thinking about in terms of rolling recessions hitting the economy starting around 2022 into 23, where if you were just looking at manufacturing or just looking at survey-based data, all of that was telling you that we were going definitively into a recession.

The offset of that was a much stronger services economy and is really what insulated us from having to go into, you know, a much broader NBER defined recession.

But I think, you know, even today,

you're right to point this out.

And it's amazing to me still how many, you know, when I hear people talk about trade and especially criticize the trade deficit,

it's incredible that the services surplus we have gets really little attention, if any, at all.

And I do think that if there was one particular pain point that I would.

sort of point to and emphasize in this entire you know trade uncertainty cloud that we've been in um i do worry a little bit more about the potential hit to our you know services demand because if you start to look actually and dissect some of the inflation data yes, broadly at the headline level, tariffs have not shown up in a meaningful way.

However, if you break it down into core goods and core services, take out the impacts of energy,

you are starting to see a little bit more heat on the goods side.

But that's being sort of the counterforce to that is disinflation on the services side.

However, some of the declines we've seen recently in services, like in the lodging and the hotel and the leisure space, have been pretty strong.

So if that doesn't turn, that'll sort of give me a little bit of a more negative signal of what's actually happening in the economy, which is goods prices rising for the wrong reason, and then services prices falling also for the wrong reason.

So, I think that dynamic is incredibly important to watch because for the many years that we've been expanding and running a goods trade deficit, we've been expanding and running a services surplus in addition to a capital account surplus.

That, to me, is not a bad thing.

Our economy has been able to grow quite well.

I know this is sort of a, it can be now a politically hot-button issue, but I think if you just look at the data, data, how much household net worth has climbed, how much our asset markets have done well, not to say that there haven't been issues, but I think that those two things are not, are not bad when you look at the goods deficit versus a capital account surplus or and or a services surplus.

I think we could do like a whole podcast on how Americans psychologically view a difference between digital services versus physically manufactured goods.

For whatever reason, the difference between those two things has this massive influence on the way we view the economy and the way we think about America, which is fascinating to me.

I'm going to shut up now.

I'm going to pause the discussion.

So I've had trouble focusing on this conversation because all I can think about is

that if Ed were to have a baby now with his girlfriend, he's seeing someone, Kevin, you should know that,

and

he were to wait till the kid was the senior investment strategist at Schwab,

you, and then that kid had another kid, until Ed's grandkid was nine, he wouldn't be my age.

He'd still be younger than me.

And that, Kevin, GDP, AI, all this bullshit, that is unacceptable.

We can't have that.

That's really freaking me out.

Anyways, glad you're here.

So

I'm literally with toddlers right now.

I'm literally with toddlers.

It's like playtime.

You got to take us seriously.

This is what your TED talk was all about.

Ask some questions about AI and make sure you don't give them any sugar.

Anyway, and keep both of you away from a large body of water.

That's my job here right now.

So anyway,

I have been struck by

a catastrophist like myself who saw these economic policies as being highly irrational and thought it would show up in the markets.

And then it did start to show up earlier in the year and the markets have ripped back.

And there's a few things happening or not happening here.

Either one, the companies that are driving the markets are somewhat immune to these tariffs because they're services companies driven by AI and not subject to these tariffs.

Two, guys like me are wrong, and these policies are actually good for, if not the economy,

the parts of the economy that drive the DAO, or the market, there's just some consumer dissonance between what is actually going on and what's happening with these stocks, and we're just kind of waiting for the reality to show up.

And there might be doors four, five, and six.

But this does seem unusual that if you look at the markets and you didn't know what was going on, you wouldn't know what was going on.

So what in your view is going on here?

Is this a validation of Trump's economic policies?

Is this investor dissonance?

Or is it the fact that the markets have moved beyond

anything

beyond the control of the current administration?

I mean, I think that it's, I mean, not as a compound answer, because I'll expand on it.

I think it is a mix of everything.

Because if you do, if you look at pre-April 2nd, it's not that we were in a zero tariff world.

I mean, we knew that higher tariffs were coming.

There were already announcements.

You know, it started with Canada, Mexico.

There were already announcements and implementations, not just at the country level, but also at the sector level.

So the market was starting to digest this and price it in.

And even absent the deep seek-inspired sell-off that started in February for big tech, there were dislocations in the market where you started to see some of that, you know, some of that breakdown.

So it's really just the April 2nd sort of moment when all of it became, again, to the breadth and the depth point I made earlier, all of that became a lot more real.

And I think at the time, too, when you look at the policy of the administration and what they were using as justification for those tariffs, which by the way is still under question in terms of the legality of them, which I'll get to in a second.

But that, I think, was the...

oh my gosh moment from the market saying this is really an effort to sort of turn this ocean liner around with the attempt of doing it like we would with a speedboat.

So I think some of it is maybe the market being a little bit more sanguine about what the goal of the administration is, not necessarily necessarily being as serious about closing these trade deficits and making sure that we source things here and becoming this export powerhouse, which economically you could argue is just, you know, it's just not feasible,

not least because we just don't have the labor force for it.

But I think the other thing, too, I mean, there are other aspects of this that are still unresolved.

Number one, and you guys have mentioned this a lot in the past week.

All of these deals and frameworks that have been sort of put together, you know, they're not binding in any ways.

You know, no ink has really been put on paper yet.

I think even with some of these investments that are being proposed, either from Japan or from the EU, there's a lot of questions around how that's enforced.

There's a lot of questions, especially for the EU.

I think what struck me the most reading it on Sunday when I got the notification was the commitment from an energy perspective.

Because even the way that energy policy is being approached right now, there's this goal of becoming an export powerhouse, again, for energy in particular.

But I'm not really sure how you do that when there's also the goal of making sure oil prices stay low and that doesn't really inspire energy production in this country.

So I'm not sure how you ramp up close to $800 billion worth, a billion dollars worth of energy exports to the EU.

So those are a couple of examples where I think the market's probably being a little bit more optimistic that either those won't be enforced as strongly or that there will be a question around the legality of the tariffs.

I mean, we're going to start hearing oral arguments this week, later this week, as to whether the IEPA tariffs, which is what everything so far has sort of been under, minus the sectoral stuff, you know, whether that is legal or not.

But I think that, you know, to answer your question and maybe not the most, you know, direct way, I do think it's a combination of many things.

At the end of the day, for large cap U.S.

companies,

I'll borrow a quote, you know, from one of my, he's become a good friend of mine, Tom Keene at Bloomberg, but he always says, you know, companies adjust.

So what our argument has been most of this time throughout the tariff turmoil has been, if you, you know, set the rate, don't change the rate.

And we hear this a ton.

I hear this a ton from clients.

I'm on the road all the time,

talking to clients, many of whom are trying to figure out how to deal with this for their businesses.

But many of them have told me in particular that they're just wanting the rate to stay where it's at.

Stop moving it around based on the country.

Stop moving it around based on the sector because ultimately companies will be able to adjust.

I think it'll be harder for smaller companies because they just don't have the balance sheets or the cash positions or the flexibility to be able to diversify their sourcing.

So if you're going to think about it in market terms, that's why I think the SP 500 has continued to do so well relative to the Russell 2000 just as an example.

We'll be right back.

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We're back with profit markets.

Technology is usually deflationary, and you can see how the productivity gains which have been promised from AI, and you can feel some of that just through personal use,

that AI should be deflationary.

At the same time, we have tariffs, we have an immigration policy that could constrict the supply of labor, which would be inflationary.

In Schwab's view, which is the stronger force?

Where does Schwab see interest rates and inflation headed the rest of the year?

You know, I think for interest rates, kind of the path of

the path that we've been on, which I've been calling the path to nowhere in terms of if you look at the 10-year yield, I mean, it's largely been trendless for the past year or year and a half.

I mean, it really hasn't moved.

It's stayed in a a pretty wide range.

I think that speaks to the upward and downward pressure that we're facing from a policy standpoint in terms of the risks of some inflation from immigration policy or tariffs, but also the back end of that, which I think is more important, which is potentially the growth negative that you have.

Not necessarily as much with tariffs.

I actually worry a little bit longer term that from the labor policy side, if we continue to go down the route of trying to constrict or sort of restrict growth, particularly with foreign-born labor, not just via deportations, but sort of at the border, at the physical border or non-physical border of people coming into the country to sort of fuel our labor force growth, that all, you know, over time is a hit to growth.

Because at the most basic level,

the product of economic growth is really just whatever you get from productivity growth and your labor force growth.

So if we're not assuming some massive boom in productivity, which it's been generally okay over the past several years, but if you're going to hold that sort of where it's been,

but you're going to see your labor force growth continue to stall or fall, then you probably have lower potential GDP growth.

I think that from a labor policy standpoint, I don't necessarily view it as inflationary right now, because yes, even though you could go into a world where we have more labor shortages, you can raise wages all you want for a job that you're trying to fill.

But if someone doesn't want to do that job or you can't find find the labor or you can't recruit the labor, then you're not going to fill the job.

And I think companies will maybe start to resort to what has become a little bit of a trend lately, which is just, you know, beefing up their existing workforce, whether it's paying them a little bit more or expanding their work week.

You know, the Dallas Fed just released a survey on this for the current month, and they, you know, they had a special question and they're surveying companies and what they were doing in response to tighter labor policy.

And that's, you know, one of the things or two of the things that they had mentioned doing.

So I think ultimately that probably slows growth and therefore is maybe a little bit more of a depressant on inflation.

So, you know, the optimistic take of that would be that you don't go necessarily into a stagflationary scenario where inflation is running really hot, but you also have relatively high unemployment.

So what do you think happens to rates?

Oh, rates, I think that ultimately helps put downward pressure on rates over time.

But I also think that when you look at just the term premium and how investors have treated fixed income over the past few years and just sort of the built-in now geopolitical risk premium, especially for the U.S.,

I think it is probably safe to say that we're in a higher for longer sort of interest rate world.

And, you know, for all that's happened this year, and when you start to think about how the Fed fits into this, if they're sort of seeing that their inflation target is still, they're still further away from their inflation target than they are their labor target, which is still the case today, and the economy continues to hang in there, even if it's not expanding at, you know, at an

exceptional pace, then that's probably all the more reason for them to stay on hold or adjust policy just a little bit lower.

So as long as they keep rates pinned relatively higher compared to where we were several years ago, certainly compared to post-financial crisis, then yeah, I think that still keeps a higher floor for interest rates.

Just in terms of

tariff pass-through,

we've started to see Q2 earnings are starting to come in, and we are starting to see signs.

PG this week, I think, is a good example,

big consumer-facing American consumer company.

And they're saying, yes, we're going to see, you know, a billion dollars in tariff-related costs and we're going to see some compression in our EPS growth.

And we're also going to pass on some of the costs to the consumer.

It's kind of like exactly what you would expect if you were to read it in an economic textbook.

What would happen if you put these tariffs on?

Yeah, they're not going to pass everything on to the consumer because the consumer wouldn't buy the product.

So they'll they'll probably just share it.

I mean, to me, I look at the earnings so far and I'm like, this is precisely what we all thought would happen.

And I'm just wondering if you look at the earnings that we've seen so far this earnings season and if you draw the same conclusions.

Basically, that

tariffs have had

a somewhat negative impact on shareholders and also a somewhat negative impact on consumers.

And that that is a trend we're going to see continue to play out for the rest of the year.

Yeah, I think I would generally agree with that.

I think still it's a small share of overall earnings.

And when you look at the aggregate S P 500 and what earnings growth has done, you know, the blended growth rate, we call it.

So taking what's been reported in addition to and combining it with the expected growth rate for the rest of the quarter, you know, that's continued to move up throughout reporting season, following a similar trend, which you normally see during reporting season, but in particular, the past couple where we started very low because analysts lowered the bar so much because they really didn't know how to bake in a lot of these, a lot of the tariff impacts.

But then we ended up at pretty exceptional levels.

And just as an example, for Q1, we started at low to mid single digits for expected growth for just that quarter.

And by the time we got to the end of the reporting season and the end of the quarter, you were at almost 14% for earnings growth.

So there was just this massive jump higher because the bar was set so low.

And that's a similar case of what we're seeing so far early days for the second quarter.

And I would mention too, it's similar for the third and the fourth quarter.

None of the earnings optimism in the first quarter was extrapolated to the rest of the year.

So the bar has been set super low and it's easy, you know, in a relative sense for companies to jump over that bar, which is why the beat rate has been, you know, close to 80%, which is pretty exceptional.

So you're starting, you're seeing it, you know, happen in certain companies, like you mentioned, but so far it's a bit more, you know, idiosyncratic and company specific where it's not filtering through to the rest of the economy.

You know, ultimately, this comes down to what we've been talking about a lot in terms of services, whether the demand for services really starts to get hit.

And if the weakness in some of these more consumer-facing or cyclically-oriented parts of the economy, if that starts to translate into broader consumer weakness and then you get a hit to the labor market, that's where sort of the economy becomes one, where you start to see everything kind of roll back into a recession.

But I think that, you know, we need more, we need more time with this because to the earlier point, you know, I made about companies just haven't having not adjusted prices yet and really not having to probably do it until closer to the end of the year, there's a lot of pricing agreements and contracts that you can't adjust, even if you're starting to face higher tariffs.

We've also got an inventory build that we're still working through,

as corporate America, that we're still working through.

So there's still enough of a cushion, I think.

And this doesn't really start getting real, I think, for the broader economy until the end of the year.

But again,

you would need to see a much more material hit for those sectors and industries that have really, really strong profit margins, because a lot of those have been the ones that have been carrying

most of the market's gains recently.

And it's not just a couple.

I mean, there's quite a few.

But if it starts to translate into weakness for those sectors, that's where I feel that you probably see a broader hit to the economy.

What do you think is going on with the meme stock craze?

We talked about it last week on our podcast.

What does that tell you about the markets right now?

I mean, this massive surge in retail participation,

open door, and American Eagle when Sidney Sweeney ends up being on the on the billboard.

And I'm sure, what else am I forgetting, Scott?

Sidney Sweeney, Sidney Sweeney.

Your thoughts on Sidney Sweeney, Kevin.

That's not a meme stock.

That's just common sense.

I'll buy whatever she's selling.

I don't know.

That's fundamental.

That's his good business strategy.

But

what does this say?

And how does Charles Schwab

think about this meme stock craze

and the fact that it is sort of having its moment once again?

Well, it's interesting that it's happening in the context of monetary policy that's still relatively tight.

Because so much of the narrative in 2020 and 2021, when you went through that meme craze, was that rates were at zero.

There was all of this double-barreled stimulus going into the economy, both on the monetary and the fiscal side.

And that was fueling this sort of rampage into retail trading, which I think is definitely true.

But it's interesting that it's happening at a time, again, where interest rates are, the Fed funds rate is above 4%.

We're not getting double barreled stimulus.

But I would add that I think the difference, or maybe somewhat of a similarity given the March 2020 experience, but this time we went through a pretty sharp correction this year.

But as you mentioned at the beginning of the show,

it's been actually the fastest recovery

from a bear market on an intraday basis because we did hit more than 20% down for the S ⁇ P on an intrad basis.

It's been the fastest recovery ever.

So I think that the buy-the-dip mentality, especially post-pandemic, has really gripped this market.

And particularly for that retail cohort, it's been a really powerful driver.

And for the most part,

that's been sort of the dead right call.

Think about the drawdowns we've had post-2020.

You've had March 2020 where the drawdown, yes, it was sharp, but it was short-lived.

Even in 2022, it was a longer bear market.

But in terms of history, it was not that severe.

A 25% drawdown is not bad for a bear market, especially a non-recessionary bear and the recovery to that you know to get back to an all-time high was fairly quick and then you you go to this year when we had a really sharp drawdown again but it was also short-lived so the bear market experience for you know a post-pandemic investor and for a younger investor in particular um has been very different than what the bear market experience has been like for somebody who's been in this for you know more than 10 years What asset classes or regions Schwab most under or overweight?

So in terms of sectors, we've gone neutral, which unsurprisingly, we did that after, you know, after April 2nd, because it was just like with everybody else, we couldn't necessarily game out what was going to be the biggest beneficiary.

So we've actually taken,

even at the sort of regional level, or if you're thinking about U.S.

large cap versus U.S.

small cap, we've taken more of a factor or a characteristic-based approach, which is looking at certain characteristics of companies or industries or sometimes sectors, whether it's strong profit margins or stronger guidance or higher interest coverage ratios and screening based on that.

We've got the tools to do it on the Schwab site.

You can do it on other sites, but I know that we have the tools to do it at Schwab.

Screening based on that has become a more consistent way to find outperformance over the past few years because you're not just beholden then to only the tech sector or only communication services, and you're not shunning energy just as an entire sector.

I mean, there are parts of the energy sector that have done quite well, that have relatively high interest coverage, that are still sitting on pretty strong profits after the energy surge that we saw in 2022, for example.

It's not the entire sector, but there are components of that sector that have continued to do well.

So that's why we've shifted more towards viewing the market in those factor terms as opposed to just sectors or just, you know, large versus small.

I do think when it comes to large versus small,

it's not a formal view that we have, but it's pretty easy to see how everything tariff-related probably is more beneficial up the cap spectrum

versus down the cap spectrum.

And I think especially as rates stay high, it probably makes sense to stay up in high-quality large cap because almost 40% of the Russell 2000, those companies have no profits on a trailing 12-month basis.

So if you combine that with a really high interest cost

and probably a tougher input sourcing mix of higher input costs and import costs.

That's probably a recipe for more of a struggle for small caps relative to large.

So

other than diversification,

be diversified, invest for the long term.

What generally speaking are your big investment themes for 25?

So it's something that dates back to actually the beginning of 24.

You know, we were looking at the AI-related craze in terms of the AI creators and everything chip related in the semiconductor space in 23 and how much of that

confidence had really sort of exponentially grown from 23 into 24.

One of our bigger themes at the time, and we wrote for our outlook for 24, was actually shifting focus, not at the expense of the creators, but shifting focus to the adopters and how many companies or industries could benefit from a lot of this technology, particularly the ones that have thin margins.

And of course, at the time, we didn't know that there were massive tariffs coming down the pike.

But now that you have that as an added pressure point for a lot of companies, those that have thin margins or the industries that have thin margins, that's really where we would emphasize sort of thematically,

being more exposed or looking for opportunities.

And again, sort of speaks to how approaching this from a sector standpoint is a little bit more difficult because it's not just

parts, it's not just tech that has all, you know, all parts of tech don't have huge margins.

There are parts of it that do have thinner margins, even in consumer discretionary.

So just to press pause, you're recommending sectors that have lower margins because they've been overpunished?

No, no, no, not necessarily lower margins because they've been overpunished but where can they find sort of incremental benefits if they do employ some of these technologies particularly the ones that have been or have suffered from you know higher labor costs over the past few years because we went through that hiring spree from 21 into 22 they weren't you know i don't want to say they were forced into hiring a lot of people but you know you look at how hot the economy was running at the time to meet a lot of the services demand that we had when we reopened.

In a way, they were sort of forced to go through that.

So now dealing with a lot of that overhang, you know, there's still a lot of great industries out there that are dealing with that overhang.

So, we're trying to shift focus to what can benefit the most based on, you know, where that lower baseline has been set and where they can improve margins from there.

Stay with us.

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We're back with Professor Markets.

Kevin, I'm going to shift us, shift gears and learn more about you.

So you are senior investment strategist, you're a director, you've been a frequent guest on TV, you've been on CNBC and Bloomberg TV,

and you're 28 years old,

which is super impressive.

So

how did you get here?

And what can we learn?

What can young people learn?

I mean, we talk a lot about the issues that young people are facing right now, which are,

there are many of them.

How did you get here?

And what would be your advice to young people who are trying to make it in 2025?

I will say that I've been, you know, I've been a bit obsessed with, you know, just the idea of working and doing something that I loved for quite a while.

So I was a little, I was a little too obsessed with it, you know, in high school and college, spending a lot of time, you know, networking and making sure I could find the job that I really liked.

I, you know, I got in touch with Schwab very early on.

I want to say I was a freshman in college.

And it was one of those instances where I sort of fell in love with the culture of the firm and decided in my head, I said, I'll work there.

I just have to figure out how to get there and, you know, what team I'm going to be on.

So I sort of did it the reverse where normally you'd apply for a job and then figure out you you like the culture if you don't like it.

I did it sort of the reverse where I figured out I like the culture and then I sort of found my way to the job.

But it was a cool, it was a cool path because, you know, I got to meet and build out so many cool networks within the company.

And eventually, you know, as they invested in me more, they figured out and we figured out that I really loved research.

I loved markets.

I grew to love, you know, the stock market over time.

Economics was my, you know, formal training in school.

So I already had that kind of set.

But as those started to come together and I fell in love, you know, more with the macro, time and place was a, you know, a powerful thing where I ended up meeting, uh, meeting Lizanne at our impact conference when I was just starting my senior year.

And we kept in touch.

And, you know, at the time, I didn't know it, but it was just at the time that she was starting to think about, you know, bringing somebody on.

And it just was a serendipitous sort of moment where she called me March of my senior year and said, hey, I'm, you know, thinking of creating this position.

And, you know, I see see if you're interested.

And I said, can I start yesterday?

And the rest is sort of history.

And it's been, you know, it's been an amazing, an amazing career.

I, you know, my dream job, yes.

But I, I always emphasize to people that it's, it's, you know, it's hard and I think probably not advisable.

A lot of mentors have told me to, you know, go into that right after, right after college.

But, you know, I've loved it.

Like I said, I've been sort of invested in the career journey for quite a long time.

I think one of the reasons that I became obsessed with it is because I've been playing music for, you know, most of my life since I was three years old.

I started violin when I was three.

So the obsession of wanting to research something, wanting to memorize a piece, wanting to play with a group, you know, an ensemble, that I think kind of led me to what I do now.

And it fits, oddly, it fits very well with what I do now, my music training.

What do you think Gen Z is missing when it comes to advancing themselves in their careers and building wealth and building security and just frankly getting out there.

I mean, we look at all of the concerning statistics.

I think probably the most illuminating is the fact that a third of us still live with our parents.

And these are these Gen Z adults.

What is Gen Z getting wrong?

Or maybe that might be harsh, but what are the things that you think that this generation could improve on if they want to just make their lives better?

It's a tough question.

I mean, I'm really passionate about the subject because I find, you know, that when I, when I do a lot more research into where, where Gen Z is investing, or, you know, I'll just say younger people in general.

It could include, you know, it could include younger millennials.

But yeah,

just stating outright that I don't want to paint it too broad with a brush, but I do think that in terms of building wealth, one thing that I've become, you know, a little bit more worried about is the way that people treat investing in the market more as this sort of speculative game and not necessarily as building this long-term wealth.

So, that to me, there's less of a focus.

And when I have conversations with younger people about, you know, 401k stuff or what their companies offer, there's just shockingly little attention to that versus how much, you know, how much can I make on one single stock that might become a meme stock?

And the amount of time that is devoted to that, you know, trading and speculating and gambling.

I won't really call it investing because that certainly doesn't fit the definition of how I view it or how we view it.

But I think that in terms of building wealth, there needs to be more of a focus and an emphasis on thinking about the long term and building that and letting it grow slowly over time.

As boring as it sounds, I think that, you know, that needs to be emphasized.

And I don't want to discount or shy away from what has become this meme craze or how people have treated the market, because I think rightly so, you know, younger people feel that they've been shut out of sort of these traditional investments, whether in housing is probably the biggest one, where, you know, you look at the median age of somebody who's buying a house now, and it looks like a meme stock.

I mean, it's gone up significantly.

So there has been this massive restrictive force on young people trying to get into what is traditionally considered

a really strong wealth-building asset class.

So I think that there are reasons for it, but I think that focusing on the long term is really important.

And in terms of the job market,

I would just say that

not applying just blindly to jobs for whatever reason.

And again, this is a broad brush, but my own experience is that taking the time to really invest in people and seek out mentors and seek out people who only have your best interest at the top of their list,

that to me has been what has paid the most dividends for me, not just professionally, but also personally.

It's that who's going to call you

on a Saturday when they know you're not doing well versus who's only interested in getting that thing on their desk first thing in the morning.

That I think needs to be thought through a lot.

I feel like there's there's definitely something in there that is different for our generation.

When I look at my position as an example, where I, in a similar position as you, decided, in my case, Scott Galloway was my Charles Schwab, but I was like, this is what I'm going to do.

And I'm going to just focus on it.

And I'm going to go all in on that.

And I wonder if there's something in that, that maybe there's something about the dynamics of the labor market today, where actually young people, you can't just be throwing out LinkedIn applications here and there.

It's too competitive or the gates are too

blocked up.

And I wonder if there's something about that sort of singular obsessiveness that this generation needs to employ more so than other generations.

Scott, any wrap-up questions?

So as you look at, I usually ask this of people who are older than you.

In the next 10 years, you're obviously a very ambitious young man.

You've done incredibly well.

What does success look like for you in the next 10 years?

Where do you hope to be in 10 years?

I mean, I, you know, I know that it's often seen as a bad thing of,

especially for the younger generation these days, at least what people tell me that staying at the same firm for a while is a bad thing.

But, you know, I grew up with my mom was at her company for 38 years.

My dad was at his for more than 20 years.

Lizanne has been at Schwab for 25.

She's my, you know, she's my greatest mentor here.

So I hope that I'm, you know, still here doing the same, sort of the same thing, which to you know, every day it changes.

But to me, success is still enjoying it and getting up as early as I do.

I don't sleep much, not because of the job, because I'm a chronic insomniac, but I think being able to still be as excited as I am, whether I'm getting up at four for a media interview or getting up at three to catch a flight to California to speak to clients,

as long as I still approach it with that same kind of eagerness every day, to me, that's a win.

And being surrounded by great people, not just at work, but in life.

That to me has been one of the biggest sort of benefits and the reasons that I have stayed, I think, sane is having really good people around me and surrounding myself sort of physically with friends,

not just through a screen.

Kevin Gordon is a director and senior investment strategist at Charles Schwab.

He also serves as a research associate to Schwab's chief investment strategist, Lizanne Saunders.

He is a frequent guest on CNBC, Yahoo Finance, and Bloomberg TV.

He holds a BA from Pepperdine University and an MBA in Finance and Economics from NYU's Stern School of Business.

Dad's right.

And you know, like all the impressive kids did not take my class.

You did not take my class, did you, Kevin?

I did not.

Yeah, there we go.

There we go.

I'm undefeated.

He knows that he can get it for free on YouTube.

He's small.

Pepperdine, the most beautiful campus in America.

I loved it.

Well done.

Congratulations on everything, Kevin.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you, guys.

Really appreciate it.

Scott, I don't know what your reactions are, but

I'm interested to get your reaction to his career path and what I sort of said about what young people need to do if they want to, quote unquote, make it in a world where it is increasingly difficult to quote unquote make it.

Any thoughts?

First First off,

I thought I knew what you were going to say, and you didn't say it.

He said he went all in on Liz Ann Saunders, and you said you went all in on Scott Galloway.

So

I was going to say that I've learned from that.

I've decided I'm going to go all in on Sidney Sweeney.

Seriously, though.

So where I go with this is the following.

I hear from a lot of kids who are applying to college, and the mistake they make is the first, or the first piece of advice I give them is like, it's okay to fall in love as long as it's plural.

Fall in love with three, five, or seven colleges because so much of this is a black box.

And I remember my stallmate, or one of my stallmates, fellow analysts at Morgan Stanley, had just decided he had to go to the Anderson School of Business at UCLA.

And they just decided they didn't want him.

He even put off going to school for a year so he could reapply.

And then he reapplied and he didn't get in.

And he was crushed.

And he ended up going to Kellogg, had an amazing career.

So, what I would suggest is there's nothing wrong with a maniacal focus saying, I really want a job at Schwab, but also recognize a lot of this is outside of your control.

And what I don't like is this hustle porn of never give up because it creates this gestalt where if you don't get the job with Lizanne Saunders at Schwab, that somehow it was your fault.

And if you'd only tried a little bit harder, a lot of this is out of your control.

And you can, your dream can be to go to Duke.

You can go down there.

You can interview.

You can get all the right test scores.

And you still might not get in because they might decide that they have too many Asian women from Michigan.

And they just don't, you just don't fit into their class.

So I like the focus, but also I do think it's a bit of a numbers game.

I applied to nine schools.

I got into two.

That's all I needed.

One out of seven businesses succeeds.

So I started nine.

And people, I hate this whole Trump bullshit of never give up.

Trump gives up all the fucking time.

He just declared bankruptcy over and over and over again.

There is a skill to knowing when to move on.

So, yeah, if you're dead set on working in Schwab, I can see being dead set on working in finance, but don't fall in love with any one company or any one school because some of this is out of your control.

And also,

let me move to even darker, more dangerous territory, believing that there's just one person for you.

And then inevitably that person breaks up with you and you're just devastated, that the one got away.

I don't believe there's any such thing as the one.

I think there are a lot of people who, for those of you out there who have had your heart broken or feel like no one's ever going to love you again, I think there are a lot of people

potentially out there for almost every person.

There is no one.

Your ability to connect with the right company, your your ability to get into the right school is a function of so many things that are outside of your control, so much about the humidity, the weather,

a series of uncontrolled moving parts.

It's the whole butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon can result in a hurricane or avoid a hurricane.

So be persistent, be focused, but also try and fall in love with five schools.

Try and fall in love with 50 different institutions in the finance market and realize if you don't get the job at Charles Schwab, you're going to be fine and try at J.P.

Morgan or just keep trying.

And if you don't, if quote-unquote the one, I remember just thinking like when a relationship of mine didn't work out, I remember thinking that's it.

I'm never going to have love like that again.

I'm never going to find someone like that.

And that's just not true.

It's just not true.

So I get it.

Be maniacally focused.

And then if it doesn't work, move on and become maniacally focused about something else there's some in-between where it's as you say you don't want to put your all of your eggs in one basket but you also want to have some level of strategic focus you want to say you know i'm not just going to spray and pray whether that comes to applying to jobs or in terms of romantic relationships i'm going to be strategic about what it is that i want what it is that i value what is important to me what my strengths are i'm going to think about that i'm going to go to the the drawing board.

And then I'm going to, I like what you say there.

I'm going to pick like four or five.

And I'm going to present to them that I am the one for this job because I've done all of my homework.

And then see what happens.

And don't be so resentful if it doesn't work out.

But I think that is helpful advice.

It is certainly somewhere in the medium.

You know, I coach a lot of young men.

I talk to young men.

Do you know what advice I occasionally give to people?

And it's anathema and verbatim.

Occasionally I say say to someone, give up.

And

I've been coaching or I've talked a little bit to this young man, incredibly impressive young man, who at the age of 18 packed up a U-Haul from Tennessee.

He was a

and then was turned down a scholarship.

He was a D1 baseball player to move out to L.A.

to pursue his dream of acting.

And he's gotten just the wrong amount of success.

He occasionally gets a bid part or a speaking role, makes a little bit of money, not, you know, some years enough to get health insurance, some not.

And now he's pushing 30.

He's engaged.

He wants to have kids.

And he's making about, on average, the last nine years, he's averaged $40,000 to $60,000 a year.

And his father-in-law...

And by the way, along the way, he took classes at Cal State Northridge.

He got a degree in accounting.

He likes numbers, right?

He's good at numbers.

I kind of was drawn towards accounting.

His father-in-law has a business management firm and has offered him a job at his business management firm.

And someday he might take over the business.

It is not nearly as cool as being, you know, potentially the lead in the next season of friends and neighbors or whatever.

And I have said to him, I think you should go.

be the successor to your father-in-law's business management firm.

And there's this dread in his voice that he feels like he's giving up.

And I'm like, boss, you're going to become passionate about taking care of your family.

You're going to become passionate about doing something really well that you get rewarded for every day

and making good money and being great at something and being able to buy a house.

And

you're clearly really good with numbers and passion comes from artistry and mastery.

But I do think there's a unhealthy

I use this word too much, gestalt, telling young people to never give up and pursue their passions, which sometimes they mistake their hobbies for their passions.

And that it's okay, go for it.

You want to coach an NBA team, go for it, be an assistant coach somewhere for a high school, but at some point think, okay, the moons aren't lining up for me.

Maybe I should do something else.

I think that's okay.

I was going to be an athlete when I was in high school.

I was going to be a pediatrician in college.

I was going to be an investment banker right out of college.

I was going to be in management information systems when I applied to business school.

And then I found strategy consulting.

And in a million years, I would have never found strategy consulting.

And in a million years, I would have never found myself doing a podcast without Elson.

Be flexible to opportunities and realize if something isn't working out, great thing about America is you can pivot to something else.

You don't want to give up because it's hard work.

That's just part of it.

So you need a kitchen cap and a people to advise you.

But I hate this notion, mostly fomented by people who consistently give up all the time or declare bankruptcy and move on, that you should never give up.

No, there is a time to move on.

This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.

Mia Silverio is our research lead.

Our research associates are Isabella Pinsel and Dan Shallan.

Drew Burroughs is our technical director and Catherine Dylan is our executive producer.

Thank you for listening to Profit Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on markets on Monday.

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