For the week ended July 11, DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Eric Dhall and Fixed Income Asset Allocation Strategist Ryan Kimmel first sort through a pause in the stock rally (0:47), bonds (2:34) giving back a bit on higher rates and higher commodity prices (4:34) amid U.S. tariffs announced on copper. While “copper got hit with a 50% tariff in the U.S.,” Eric Dhall notes July 11 that copper prices fell on the London Metal Exchange over the week while rising 9% in the U.S. “A bit of a mismatch there depending on where you’re delivering copper.” The impact of the tariff remains an open question. “It depends on how the tariff applies. Does it apply to raw copper ore? To finished copper? It’s a complicated beast. That’s why you didn’t see the U.S. price surge more than that 9%.”
Ryan Kimmel (6:19) notes that stocks seem to be interpreting tariff drama as negotiating tactics rather than a serious threat to growth. Meanwhile, in the wake of passage of President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” he sees “higher term premium baked into the long end” of the Treasury yield curve. Surveying macro news for the past two weeks (7:42), Eric Dhall and Ryan see more weakness in labor markets than would suggest a superficial read of headline household and establishment survey numbers, with the prospects of a diminishing labor force given an expected ramp-up of illegal immigrant deportations.
Turning to Fed watch (13:52), Eric and Ryan note increasing odds of a cut in the federal funds target rate at the Sept. 17 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. They ponder the prospect of an “Apprentice-style battle” among candidates to succeed Chairman Jerome Powell. All eyes during the July 14-18 week (15:20) will be on Tuesday’s release of the June CPI report, especially any indications of tariff impacts, and Wednesday’s release of the PPI.
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 on the Macro Asset Allocation team. Mr. Kimmel is also a Strategist on the Fixed Income Asset Allocation (FIAA) Committee and a contributing member on our Global Asset Allocation Committee. Prior to DoubleLine, Mr. Kimmel was a Proprietary Trader at Gelber Group, trading currencies for the Foreign Currency Group. Prior 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 holds an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA.
