By Staff Reporters

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Stocks dipped at the start of August. The S&P 500 gave up an early gain to end down 11.7 points, or 0.3%, to close at 4,118.6. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 46.7 points to 32,708, or 0.1%, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ fell 0.2%. Smaller company stocks also gave back some of their recent gains, nudging the Russell 2000 0.1% lower. Bond yields mostly fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which influences mortgage rates, fell to 2.60% from 2.65% late Friday.

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• Jim Rogers is bracing for an epic stock-market crash and a painful recession.
• George Soros’ former partner sees the US dollar, energy, and agriculture as solid short-term bets.

Jim Rogers warned a historic stock-market crash is on the horizon, touted energy and agriculture as near-term winners, and cautioned that curbing inflation would require much higher interest rates during a recent Kitco News interview. Rogers is best known as the co-founder of Quantum Fund and Soros Fund Management. The veteran investor predicted a painful recession, ruled out bitcoin succeeding as a currency, and asserted that even a Russia-Ukraine peace deal wouldn’t prevent asset prices from eventually plunging.

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And now, some cautionary advice for workers worried about an economic downturn. “It will be mostly a white-collar recession. And the blue-collar recession will not be in the same places that we saw in the past.” That was William Lee, chief economist at the Milken Institute, a Santa Barbara, Calif.-based think tank, in an interview with MarketWatch, speculating on the nature of America’s next recession. Amid rising expectations among economists of a recession — commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth — Lee said there’s still a demand for blue-collar workers in service and manufacturing, which will help protect those workers if a recession hits. Even with a low unemployment rate of 3.6%, lower-income workers are always vulnerable in any economic downturn, but adding to comments he made on Bloomberg Radio earlier this week, Lee said there may be exceptions to that rule this time around. 

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Finally, there’s an optimistic outlook considering June’s hot inflation reading of 9.1%, the fastest rise in prices in 41 years. It prompted another 75-point rate hike from the central bank last week, bringing the policy rate to 2.25%-2.5%. But there are signs the inflation fight is beginning to show results, Fundstrat said. July’s stock market performance was the strongest since November 2020, and inflation expectations have come down since July’s FOMC meeting.

• The economy has entered a technical recession — but it could be just a growth scare, Fundstrat said.
• Inflation expectations have flattened, and markets now see the policy rate peaking at 3.28% in January 2023.
• It suggests that the stock market may not fall as sharply as some banks have predicted.

The economy entered a technical recession following the second straight quarterly decline for US GDP, but the market could be looking at a growth scare instead of a full blown recession and inflation should start falling sharply beginning with July’s reading, Fundstrat said in a note over the weekend. 

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Filed under: Alerts Sign-Up, Financial Planning, Glossary Terms, Investing, Op-Editorials | Tagged: and the Economy, DJIA, economy, Fundstrat, Jim Rogers, Jim Rogers Speaks, NASDAQ, recession, S&P 500, stocks, UPDATE: The Markets | 1 Comment »