DoubleLine Portfolio Manager Eric Dhall and Fixed Income Allocation Strategist Ryan Kimmel dissect the Sept. 15-19 week, with stocks (0:22) rallying to new highs on tech, comm services and consumer discretionary; yield-curve steepening (2:15); and commodities weakening amid strength in precious metals (3:40). The week’s macro news (7:04) was dominated by the Federal Open Market Committee’s quarter-point fed funds rate cut and comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell Sept. 17 indicating a preoccupation with risks to the labor market, albeit in a context of ongoing concern about the future path of inflation. While forecasts in some corners called for as many as three FOMC member dissents, only newly appointed Governor Stephen Miran, who has called for three 0.5% federal funds rate cuts over the last three FOMC meetings of 2025, voted in disagreement with Wednesday’s quarter-point cut. However, Eric and Ryan take note of the extraordinary dispersion among FOMC members over the future course of monetary policy.
Looking ahead to the week of Sept. 22-26 (21:43), Eric and Ryan will be particularly focused on the Fed’s preferred gauge of inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index for August. Based on CPI, PPI and import and export prices, economists’ consensus forecasts a relatively benign month-over-month increase of 20 basis points (0.20%), which would leave the year-over-year Core PCE increase unchanged at 2.9%.
Subscribe to the Minutes podcast on:
iTunes | Spotify
Follow us on X
Comments and suggestions should be directed to Minutes@doubleline.com
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.
