Investing

The Analyst Who Called the Crash Says More Pain Is Coming

Austin Smith

Published: May 22, 2024 7:23 pm

Last Updated: May 22, 2024 9:23 pm

This conversation focuses on Barry Bannister’s prediction of a downturn in the S&P 500, and skepticism about future interest rate cuts. The discussion also touches on persistent inflation despite efforts by the Federal Reserve, with examples from Target and Walmart (NYSE: WMT) illustrating consumer behavior in response to high prices.

Transcript:

I wrote an article today that’ll be out pretty soon where a guy that we have followed for years at 24/7 Wall Street is Barry Bannister at Stifel.

He has made some incredible calls. He was right at the bottom of the COVID crash in 2020, and he has made just great calls.

And his call now is that the next 500 points in the S&P 500 is down.

I think personally we’re horribly overbought, and there’s not going to be any interest rate cuts. If they do one at all, it’ll be after the election.

Is the reason that Dow 50,000 is very, very unlikely in the next couple of years, what you’re saying is that inflation has not been wrung out of the economy.

I know the Federal Reserve has tried to, but most of the research you see says that many, many of the items that a typical American has to buy are still in what we would describe as a fairly high inflation situation for the people making the purchases.

Oh, absolutely. And you saw it today with Target discounting 5,000 consumer items.

And you saw it with Walmart’s gigantic numbers because people, even upper-income buyers, are moving to Walmart to shop, to get groceries because everybody’s looking for an edge.

The pipe dream of the Fed and their 2% core PCE inflation, that’s not going to happen.