Program:  Making Money with Charles Payne
Date:  3/18/2022

Station:  Fox Business News

Time:  2:00PM

CHARLES PAYNE: You know, I want to just stay with Powell for a moment. Right. Because the markets when Powell initially started speaking, we were on a roller coaster ride. We started that session higher. We went all the way down and then we started to climb back up. And it was interesting, too, about this thing is that that Fed announcement, it wasn’t unanimous. We had James Bullard, who dissented. And then today he went even further, saying that the committee will have to move quickly to address the situation or risk losing credibility over this whole inflation thing. I want to bring in Scott Martin now because Scott James, Paul at one a 50 basis points, he wants to be ultra aggressive. He’s saying if they miss this opportunity, the Fed will lose credibility. And I’m not sure what that would mean for the market. But do you think he’s on the right path?

SCOTT MARTIN: I think he was on the right path at one point. Charles But lately, because of the Russian Ukraine conflict, as well as some latest economic growth numbers, I think 25 was the right move a couple of months ago. 50 looked good. But Bullard’s been interesting in his commentary of late because you’re right, he’s talking about the Fed reducing its balance sheet, another kind of very hawkish measures coming into a period. Charles, we’re getting into some economic uncertainty. We’re seeing consumer confidence pull back. We’ve got a disappointing retail sales number, I think, coming up for March. So I think the Fed made the right move and also left the door open for some more flexibility going forward just in case things do weaken.

PAYNE: And we should also point out, like the two year, it rose so much ahead of the meeting that the jawboning worked like there were certain things that Powell want it to happen that actually happened and he didn’t have to pull the levers saving his ammo. Inflation is with us, we know that. But the dynamics of it are changing. Service driven is going up, the man is going down. And that to me seems to impact your portfolio. Are you making changes based on the fact that services we’re going to be using them now?

MARTIN: Yeah. I mean, we’ve looked and looked at picking up some consumer discretionary names a lot here on the lows this week, Charles, just because I believe that’s that service area you talked about. And just as you’ve been talking about this whole show, I mean, my goodness, you know, as we talked about really all these last couple of months together, my man, I mean, it’s darkest before dawn in the markets and also outside your front door. So what that means is when things look really bad and everybody’s telling you to sell, it’s usually too late. And that’s actually the time you should be buying. So not only have we been picking up, say, names in the consumer discretionary sector, but also some of those tech growth names that have been thrown out with the baby and the bathwater.

PAYNE: Let me ask you about the housing market. We have some big news today. Existing home sales declined 7.2% in February. That was well below Wall Street’s consensus. Meanwhile, mortgage rates are soaring. In fact, this is the fastest pace on record. Is this housing boom still in place?

MARTIN: Sort of depending on the location. Real estate’s always location, location, location. It’s cooling off. The one problem, though, that housing has that we’ve seen in other areas of the economy, Charles, it’s supply. Housing supply out there is not exactly robust. So therefore, as rates have ticked up, as you mentioned, very, very steep pace that we’re seeing out there now that will soften demand. But we’ve got to get supply going as far as new homes and homes for sale. If you really want to see housing cool off or at least that price rise that we all have seen cool off.

PAYNE: All right, Scott, thank you so much. You know what? You’ve been guiding them, right, for a long time. Appreciate it. Have a great weekend.

MARTIN: Yeah.