CIO Scott Martin Interviewed on Fox News 7.21.22 Cavuto Coast to Coast Pt. 2
Economy, Fox News, gas prices, Kingsview Investment Management, Kingsview Partners, Neil Cavuto, Scott Martin, wage growth
Kingsview CIO Scott Martin discusses a shift in cryptocurrency, the consumer impact of natural gas prices, and current wage growth.
Program: Cavuto Coast to Coast
Date: 7/21/2022
Station: Fox Business News
Time: 12:00PM
NEIL CAVUTO: All right. We’re about 14 50% through the earnings season here. You know, companies reporting on how much money they made or did not make in the second quarter. That’s seven out of ten are reporting numbers that were better than thought. Scott Martin was focusing on that in the last hour. And Scott, do you think about it? That trend continues. And of course, these were ratcheted down. So anything slightly better is more than slightly good for Wall Street, huh?
SCOTT MARTIN: Correct. As in relationships, Neil. Expectations, my friend. You can’t overpromise, but you can certainly under-deliver, I guess. And that’s happened to me. Obviously, personal story will leave the rest out of it. The companies aren’t, though, that out there that are very smart, Neil, that saw the turn down the economic data and let’s face it the markets some months ago and probably still we’re pretty emotional it was the sell first ask questions later environment companies saw the perfect opportunity with the lead block with a fullback going through the line of scrimmage to say, you know what, we’re going to we’re going to downgrade, we’re going to lower expectations again. So therefore, when the numbers come out, like we’ve seen with Tesla, Netflix and so forth this week, hey, the market’s rallying these stocks because we already know things are going to be bad. It’s the hopes of them getting better that we’re excited about.
CAVUTO: What about a lot of these cryptocurrencies? They’ve held up very well, especially with this latest news. You know, the Tesla’s unloaded a lot of this stuff. Are they having their day? Are they getting their footing now? Today is a kind of a weird day, I grant you, but still, week over week, not too shabby.
MARTIN: Very weird day. You’re right. But my goodness, Neil, I mean, look at Tesla stock today after they just talked about the huge impact billions that it had on the earnings report and similar to things like MicroStrategy, which is another company, has a heavy investment in Bitcoin Square as well. These stocks are hanging in there, to your point, stabilizing because and suddenly crypto is not so cool anymore. So they’re moving on from those those things. I mean, you have the thing that’s interesting, though, if you think about this whole Bitcoin craze and now the Bitcoin bust is this is really the last thing I’ll say on this is it seems really pervasive though and it’s not quite getting maybe the attention it needs just yet and maybe the fallout has not been totally felt. But my goodness, this reaches all the way to athletes and other people who have taken payments and other things in Bitcoin as, as, as lieu of money, actual cash like straight up US dollar, which suddenly people hated like three months ago and said buy bitcoin. Yet I don’t think the dollar is down 50% over that time. So it’s very interesting to see what the what the long lasting effects of these are going to be. But yes, it’s good to see some of the stocks that are involved in Bitcoin with a little bump in Bitcoin in the last few days go up, actually.
CAVUTO: Finally, real quickly, I mean, we’re talking so much on on gas prices in this country. And they’ve gone down 36, 37 days running. Natural gas prices certainly have not. They’re up about 50%. And right now, that was just over the last month, 10% yesterday. I don’t quite know how they’re doing today, but I am wondering whether that’s the unwritten story here, because that’s going to be a squeeze this winter. That continues.
MARTIN: For sure. And it already started to squeeze us last winter, too. I mean, gosh, you know, utility costs especially, you know, heating oil really went up. And so some of the things that I’m worried about is exactly that, because now what’s happening, Neal, with respect to kind of prices and they are coming down to some degree, certainly input costs, building costs coming down nicely. We’ve seen gas come down, as you mentioned, at least at the pump somewhat. The worry I have, though, is now we’ve got this turnover in the economy a bit, not the recession. Recession is already here. We all know that. I don’t care what Jared Bernstein says, I don’t care if the president says. But in this in the winter, Neil, that’s when the job maybe market may not be as strong. We may not be having such high wage growth as we have now, and the heating costs and all those things are going to still be there for us. And that’s something that’s going to be a struggle for Americans.
CAVUTO: All right. Thank you, my friend. Whatever the relationship, it’s got a sound one with us. We appreciate it. Scott Martin, Kingsview Asset Management CIO, Fox News contributor. We’re very lucky to have him.