DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Eric Dhall and Fixed Income Asset Allocation Strategist Ryan Kimmel (0:22) review markets and macro through the week ended May 2. “If you were a Rip van Winkle investor who went to sleep March 31 and woke up today, what would you find?” After the tariff-unleashed sell-offs, Eric notes Rip would find equities up across the major indices. Rates (4:97) moving higher farther out the yield curve led to lower returns in most of the fixed income universe for the month with bright spots being high yield corporates and bank loans. Commodities (6:57) were down more than 4% from March 31 through May 2, led by energy down 14%, with precious metals being the bright spot, up 6%, and gold up 3%.
Economic data (8:47) for the week, Ryan notes, “took more of a front stage compared to previous weeks that were dominated by tariffs.” Among those prints, he covers the JOLTS report, with weaker-than-expected job openings reported for March and a healthy balance between job openings and total unemployed workers. Consumer confidence has deteriorated due to concerns about tariffs. ISM manufacturing shows more contraction into recessionary territory. On a positive note, nonfarm payrolls showed improvement amid abating wage growth.
Looking to the week ahead (21:11), topping Eric and Ryan’s calendar will be the Federal Open Market Committee meeting Wednesday May 7 and Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell’s news conference. The futures markets have priced in only a 3% probability of a cut to the target federal funds rate. The news conference promises to be more interesting. “Everybody is going to be watching Jay Powell to see how he tap-dances around the questions that he’s going to get regarding his job.”
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Mr. Dhall joined DoubleLine in 2013. He is a Portfolio Manager on the Macro-Asset Allocation team where he works with portfolio management performing analysis and trading for derivatives-based and multi-asset strategies. Mr. Dhall’s research and analysis has contributed to the team’s development of DoubleLine’s smart-beta suite of strategies. Prior to DoubleLine, he worked at Capital Group performing quantitative analysis in fixed income. Prior to Capital Group, Mr. Dhall was an instructor in finance at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a research instructor at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. Previous to that, he worked in International Finance at Gulf Machinery Company. Mr. Dhall holds a B.S. in Physics with a secondary emphasis in Business from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.S. in Financial Engineering from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Mr. Kimmel joined DoubleLine in 2013. He is an Analyst overseeing the Multi-Asset Growth Strategy. Prior to DoubleLine, Mr. Kimmel was a Proprietary Trader at The Gelber Group, trading currencies for the Foreign Currency Group. Previous to that, he was an Investment Banking Analyst in Morgan Stanley’s Mergers and Acquisitions Group. Mr. Kimmel holds a B.A. in Business Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.
