About this episode
Wall Street's bets that Federal Reserve rate cuts will keep powering Corporate America drove stocks to all-time highs, with traders piling into the riskier corners of the market. The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Russell 2000 small-cap index all closed at fresh highs on Thursday, for the first time since November 2021. An MSCI index of global stocks also closed at a record. We look at the market landscape with Shams Afzal, Managing Director at the Carnegie Investment Counsel. Plus - Fed Chair Jerome Powell managed against the odds to forge a near-unanimous consensus at this week's policy meeting, with new Governor Stephen Miran the only one to vote against the quarter-percentage-point interest-rate cut. Miran, a close ally of President Donald Trump who was just sworn into a temporary Fed position on Tuesday, dissented in favor of a larger reduction — something the president has been demanding for months. In her latest column, Bloomberg Opinion's Shuli Ren writes that one thing is clear following Miran's appointment: the dollar will get a lot weaker. She joins us to explain. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.