Nick Elfner, co-head of research at Breckinridge Capital Advisors, says that investment-grade corporate bonds are well positioned to be the strong fixed-income play now that the Federal Reserve has started cutting interest rates. Financial counselor Kristine Stevenson, author of "How to Avoid Trouble With the IRS," chats about how so many tax and f…

Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar Inc., returns to the show — earlier this week she discussed her book "How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement" — to talk about how inflation, rate cuts and other current events are impacting retirement planning and asset allocation…

Phillip Wool, head of research at Rayliant Global Advisors, makes a strong case for investing in emerging markets — as well as for sticking with investments in China despite geopolitical risk there — noting that valuations are particularly compelling compared to a domestic stock market that is flirting with record highs. While Wool does not expect …

Kevin Mahn, president and chief investment officer at Hennion & Walsh, expects continued bouts of volatility for the market for the rest of the year, spurred by uncertainty around the election and the Federal Reserve's moves, but he noted that when the central bank historically has cut rates when the stock market is near all-time highs, the market …

Amar Reganti, fixed income strategist at the Hartford Funds, says that the Federal Reserve normally starts cutting rates only when something has gone wrong, but there doesn't seem to be any portion of the U.S. economy that is so over-leveraged that it craters as/when a rate-hike cycle ends. If nothing surfaces, Reganti says this may be the generati…

Longtime personal finance journalist Jonathan Clements — the editor at Humble Dollar, and former columnist at the Wall Street Journal — discusses how his outlook and feelings about money have mostly been reinforced since he was diagnosed in May with terminal lung cancer, and how he his focusing his time, money and energy now to make the most of his…

Nate Thooft, chief investment officer and senior portfolio manager at Manulife Investment Management says he's not "banging the table to be significantly overweight" in the technology issues that have carried the stock market back to record high levels. He says investors should be looking at areas besides U.S. tech stocks — shifting into small-cap …

Mark Fleming, chief economist at First American Financial Corp., says the big news on Wednesday was not that the Federal Reserve started a rate-cutting cycle, but that it appears that there could be additional, aggressive rate cuts that could take an additional 1.5 percentage points off rates over the next 15 months. That rate cutting, Fleming says…

Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, expects the Federal Reserve to cut interest rate three times before the year ends — starting with a first cut being announced today — and says the central bank will drop rates by one full percentage point by the time 2025 rolls around. He talks about how and where consumers and investors will f…

Warren Pierson, co-chief investment officer at the Baird Funds, says that he expects the economy to keep chugging along, avoiding a deep recession as it enters a rate-cut cycle that initially trigger a rally but investors will not want to extend the duration of their holdings too long. Pierson notes that no matter who wins the White House in Novemb…

Joe Quinlan, head of market strategy for Merrill and Private Bank, Bank of America, says that he expects the stock market to show better breadth in 2025, with other stocks picking up slack for the Magnificent Seven stocks, which he thinks will keep growing but at much slower rates. He notes that "the U.S. economy continues to defy expectations," an…

Scott Martindale, chief executive officer at Sabrient Systems — which takes a quantitative approach to investments — says that some of the standard measures of inflation are skewed in ways that present an inaccurate picture of what's happening now. He discusses the "Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices" and how it, and several other measures, sugges…

Gargi Chaudhuri, Chief Investment and Portfolio Strategist, Americas, at BlackRock, says that while she foresees a slowdown in the economy but nothing that will rise to the level of a recession. Still, as the Federal Reserve enters a rate-cutting phase during the fall — a historically volatile time for the market — she expects that investors will s…

Jonathan Treussard, founder of Treussard Capital Management says "we haven't seen this much geo-political static on the horizon in at least a generation," raising real concern about how a laundry list of global boiling points could hit home. He says those risks overhang a market that looks like it can avoid a downturn for a while with the Federal R…

Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco, says that recessions haven't been canceled, but there is no reason to expect one for at least the next year, "especially if we get the Fed to start to meaningfully ease." She thinks the Federal Reserve will start that easing process later this month with a small rate cut, largely because a…

David Trainer, founder and president at New Constructs — who put Nvidia stock in "The Danger Zone ahead of its earnings report at the end of August, just before the stock cratered — says that the market and economic conditions are changing and lower liquidity and a slowing economy "is a recipe for a major correction in a lot of individual stocks," …

David Souccar, international equity portfolio manager at Vontobel Quality Growth, says that the interest-rate cutting cycle is going to help international equities, as foreign central banks follow the Federal Reserve's moves, which should help foster a softer landing worldwide. That said, Souccar notes that if the United States starts raising tarif…