In “Stocks in Translation,” Lee Munson, chief investment officer at Portfolio Wealth Advisors, delivers a forthright critique of the disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street. With humor, he exposes the financial elite’s myopic focus on interest rates and potential blind spots. While Wall Street clings to cheap credit, ordinary Americans suffer from rising prices for basic goods and services, Munson argues.
He shares his insights with Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre and Sydnee Fried on “Stocks in Translation.” Listen to the full episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.
This post was written by Jimi Corpuz
Video Transcript
What I think people miss about Wall Street is that Wall Street is a bunch of rich people like me. We care about interest rates because we want to borrow cheaply so we can make more capital, buy a big house in Aspen, and get a low interest rate loan on a Ferrari.
When I go and talk to the public, you know, I’m from New Mexico.
I just talk to Uber drivers and people on the street.
They don’t think about interest rates in that sense.
They’re thinking about inflation, when will these prices come down?
So when I say, “Don’t worry. I’m a Wall Street expert, and you know inflation is going down.”
That’s not what they’re talking about.
They want the nominal price to fall.
So when I hear people on Wall Street say, “The feds lowered interest rates, the feds lowered interest rates, and we’re looking at this,” I think there’s a huge contradiction.
So I think we need to slow that growth a little bit to have any chance of really getting inflation under control.